


She Is Coming (aka It Girl, aka Love Virus)

by cairistiona13



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Attempted Sexual Assault, Bullying, Clubbing, Consensual Underage Sex, Cunnilingus, Date Rape, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Drama, Drugs, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Genderswap, Gratuitous Smut, High School, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, M/M, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Masturbation, Partying, Phone Sex, Secrets, Sex Toys, Smut, Underage Kissing, Victim Blaming, Voice Kink, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 15:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6759196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cairistiona13/pseuds/cairistiona13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kim Junhee moves to a new school with some very strange rules, she doesn’t know how the school will change her over the next year, or the secrets she will learn whilst she is there. (Part of her wishes she never learns the secrets, though.)<br/>But she’d never regret moving there, because of one reason: Kim Jungin, the gorgeous third year student who is everything she’s ever wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Is Coming (aka It Girl, aka Love Virus)

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first proper EXO genderswitch fic I wrote, back in 2012/2013.
> 
> Maknae line’s ages have been rearranged, so Jongin is the eldest, then Sehun and finally baby Zitao.  
> I’m sorry 2PM and SiSTAR fans. Really sorry.  
> After talking to a friend about girl names, I changed EXO’s names. Kyungsoo and Baekhyun could be girls’ names (I found girls with both) but it was just easier. I don’t know how Chinese names work —yes, even though I’m in China—so Zitao got to keep her name.  
> In order of age: Junhee (Suho), Baekhwa (Baekhyun), Jungda (Chen), Chanyeon (Chanyeol), Kyungri (D.O.), Jungin (Kai), Seyoung (Sehun). As far as I can tell no girl has Myun/Jong/Dae in her name. Most girls don’t have Jun/Joon in their names, either, with the exception of “Junhee” (Juniel’s real name). I didn’t want any of the endings to be the same (like how their real names don’t match—take that Super Junior, Big Bang, Boyfriend, etc ^^”) or I’m pretty sure I would have: Junhee, Baekhee and Junghee. I would possibly also have Chanhee, just because I could.
> 
> 2016 notes: The drug is ridiculous and the ending (both of the fic and the epilogue) is ridiculous and I'm sorry.  
> Also Kyungsoo is anything but meek, but that was the stereotype back in 2012/2013. I'm sorry for that, too.

Kim Junhee stands looking up at the school. It’s not the first time she’s seen it—it was in the brochures her father had given her when he told her they were moving. He told her it was a nice school. Not girls-only like her previous private school had been, but nice enough.

The school is made of white-painted brick and it stands tall, easily two floors. It’s not a huge high school but it’s not tiny either. A few hundred pupils, girls and boys, go here.

It’s been a long time since Junhee interacted with boys her own age. She’s not entirely sure how to go about it. Girls at her old school used to talk about their boyfriends all the time. She’s not even sure where they met them. Their school was miles from a boys’ school.

She stands there a bit too long, because a moment later the school buses arrive and there’s a swarm of teenagers around her. They make her unsteady on her feet and she falls to the ground as the swarm enters the building. Somehow she’s managed to stay on the steps inside, and she’s kept her schoolbag with her, which she thinks is an impressive feat. She had been afraid she’d be swept inside prematurely.

She stands up and brushes the dust from her skirt. Her white socks have dirt on them now and her mother is going to kill her. She tries to brush it off anyway. She can feel her carefully-done pigtails begin to unravel and she sighs, dragging the tie out of one and redoing it with quick, practiced fingers.

When she thinks she looks presentable, she takes a deep breath in, clenches her hands in her skirt and thinks, _You can do it, Kim Junhee! Put your confident face on! If you don’t looked scared they won’t see it! Confidence is key!_

She fixes a smile, gentle and hopefully approachable, on her face and marches into the school.

She already has her class schedule and a map of the school, so she walks around the thrum of students and heads to the secretary to find her school locker number. The secretary apologises profusely when she gives Junhee the locker number, saying she’ll be moved to the girls’ wing once a locker comes available, and Junhee blinks in confusion, not understanding.

Once she has her key, she follows the map to her locker. There’s a boy opening the locker above hers, and so she waits until he’s done, thinking it to be rather inappropriate to be kneeling around him. She doesn’t want people to get any strange thoughts. She knows people are prone to them—or girls were at her last school, at least. Absently, she wonders how Juhyun and her other friends are doing since she left them.

The boy leaves without giving her a look, without even seeing her, and she kneels quickly, trying to keep her knees from touching the ground, and to keep her modesty intact. She slides off her shoes and stows them in the locker along with the books for her afternoon classes, and then she pulls on the slippers she’s brought. They’re white and like plimsolls, and they’re soft, and she likes them.

When she’s done, she opens the map and puzzles over it until she can see her classroom, and she moves through corridors until she gets to the right room.

There are only a couple of students in there already, sitting in their seats. One girl is doing homework, and the girl in the seat behind her is reading a book. A boy, at the back of the room, has his feet up on the table before him and appears to be asleep.

Junhee stands at the front of the classroom, twitching and uncomfortable. She keeps her smile on her face even though she feels embarrassed and she wonders if the awkwardness is starting to seep through. She doesn’t know if there’s a seating arrangement, so she doesn’t dare sit down.

Finally, after far too long for comfort, the teacher comes in, a tall westerner with blonde hair and kind eyes. “Hello,” she says, in English, and Junhee nervously replies in kind.

“You’re Junhee, yes?” the teacher says, and Junhee nods her head. The teacher points her over to a chair and Junhee bows, hastening towards it. She’s never felt quite so grateful to be sitting down in her life, and she knows she’ll have to do this for every class she’s in. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

She notices, once she’s sitting down, that there’s a clear divide between boys and girls in the classroom. There’s a split down the middle, a gap between the tables for the teacher to walk down, and Junhee notices that girls don’t lean over to talk to boys. They don’t seem to interact with each other at all. It’s very unnerving. But Junhee doesn’t know if it’s just in this classroom, or if it’s the whole school. If it were the whole school that would certainly explain the locker divide and the secretary’s apologies. It was almost like being back at her all-girls school, except she could see the boys.

The class speeds by quickly, and then she heads to her next one. None of the students talk to her. Some girls give her raised eyebrows and the boys act like she’s not even there, which is very disturbing, and she doesn’t like it at all.

It’s lunchtime before she sees any sign of boys and girls interacting, and it’s not even proper interaction.

Junhee stands with her lunch-tray looking around the hall for familiar faces. She sees a group of girls from her English class, but they fill up the empty seats with their bags, and she frowns, wondering if she’s done something wrong without realising it.

She moves around the room, but no girls offer her places. She’s frustrated enough that tears are burning her eyes and she’s considering going over to ask at one of the boys’ tables, because she recognises one of the boys from History—Zhang Yixing, she thinks his name is—as he sits across the aisle from her and he seems unthreatening. His friends don’t seem that bad either; three boys, one tiny and pretty, a little bit elf-like, a small boy with a round but kind face, and a tall and handsome boy who seems to command the area around him. She thinks they might be nice to her, and she steels her shoulders and begins moving across to the table, when there’s a strange noise across the room.

There’s a girl who she hadn’t noticed, tall but somehow also tiny and inconspicuous, with long dark hair and skin a little bit tanner than most of the girls there, some of whom were almost as pale as snow. Junhee hadn’t noticed her because she’d been sitting alone in the corner, huddled up with her lunch.

But now her lunch is across the floor, plate shattered, tray upside-down. The girl herself is kneeling in the mess on the ground, her socks staining orange with the kimchi. There are two boys standing over her, taunting her. The girl simply bows her head and tries to still her facial expression, but even from here Junhee can see that her shoulders are shaking with the effort of concealing her sobs.

Junhee wonders where the teachers are, why nobody’s hurrying to look after this girl. Surely someone cares about her? But whilst girls are standing up to look, nobody’s making any moves, and she can’t see any teachers.

Junhee has always had a maternal sense about her that makes her want to hold smaller, younger girls, stroke their hair, and just protect them in general. It was one of the reasons why Juhyun was one of her only same-aged friends back at her last school and she spent most of her time with the girls in first and second year.

She feels this sense pull at her now and all she can manage is to thrust her lunch-tray at the nearest table before she’s running over to the girl.

“Mind your own business,” one of the boys tells her as his friend grabs the girl’s ponytail, trying to lift her up even as she cries and presses a hand to her head. Up close, Junhee can see the boys are wearing the blue collar of fifth year, the collar Junhee had seen on Yixing’s friends. The girl, in comparison, is a second year, her collar orange. Junhee seethes, wondering how an eighteen year old boy can be so cruel as to pull on the hair of a little fifteen year old girl.

“No,” Junhee says, anger seeping into her voice. She’s easily a foot shorter than these boys but somehow she doesn’t feel like it matters because she’s just so furious. “Let her go.” She folds her arms and looks up at the boy holding the girl with an unwavering stare. She puts all her strength into it, showing she won’t be cowed. She isn’t a coward. But this is probably because she hasn’t dealt a lot with boys her own age, not for a long time, so she isn’t really aware of what they can be like.

The other boy slaps her. The force is so strong that it knocks her sideways, but she stays on her feet, and she turns to face him without retaliating, just focusing on keeping her gaze strong.

Maybe something in her gaze does stop him, or maybe there are teachers assembling, because the boy tells his friend to stop. He drops his hand from the girl’s hair and they leave swiftly.

Junhee crouches beside the girl, who collects herself, pulling back from the damage.

“Are you okay?” she asks gently, trying to be soothing.

The girl blinks at her for a moment and then looks around the hall, seeing everyone’s stares on her, and she goes bright red. She stands so quickly she makes Junhee dizzy to look at her, and then she runs to the nearest door, her long legs carrying her there quickly.

Junhee looks after her, dumbfounded, and then stands to go and collect her lunch from the table she’d left it at.

As she draws nearer, one of the girls jerks her elbow and the tray goes flying off the table and down Junhee’s legs, staining her socks like the bullied girl’s, and covering her shoes in ceramic shards. “Oh, sorry,” the girl says, but she doesn’t sound sorry. One of her friends, a third year with a yellow collar, covers her mouth as she laughs.

Junhee feels her anger rise up, but she doesn’t let it show. Instead she makes sure to smile disarmingly at the girl. “It’s okay,” she says as kindly as she can manage. “I’ll clear it up.”

And then she kneels on the ground and quickly collects the large shards of the broken plate, being mindful not to cut her fingers on any. When she’s done she stacks them on the tray along with the battered remainders of her lunch; an apple and a swollen carton of juice, missing its straw. Her chocolate bar is missing and she sighs regretfully, guessing the girls took it, before lifting the tray and heading over to where the girl had been eating. She sets her tray down on the table and carefully works on clearing up the mess on the floor, stacking the ceramic on top of her own. When she’s finished, she collects the girl’s orange and crumpled bottle of water, rescues her own food, and takes the trays over to the bin. She dumps everything in but the food, sets the trays on the side, and leaves without looking back at the rest of the hall. She doesn’t care what their reaction is, she thinks. These were the people who were so horrible they let a fifteen year old girl get attacked in front of them. She doesn’t owe them anything.

She makes a mental note to pack her own lunch and to eat in the classroom the next day.

She wanders around the school, trying to find where the girl’s hiding. She can’t see her in any of the classrooms on the ground floor, so she heads to the toilets by the cafeteria.

There’s nobody in this one, but in the toilets at the far end beside the drama rooms, one of the stall doors is locked. She can’t see any feet, but she can hear sobbing, so she’s pretty sure she’s right.

She feels awkward knocking on the door or even speaking to the girl, who clearly doesn’t want to speak to her, so she kneels and places the water, fruit and her juice box—the girl probably needs it more than she does—just under the stall door, and then she turns and leaves, heading to her next class to sit there, early, for lunch to end. Her stomach rumbles but she ignores it. At least the little girl will have got something to eat, and that’s the most important thing.

\---

Kim Jungin hadn’t even known there was a new girl until late lunchtime.

When lunchtime started she’d been sitting with her friends, staring through Park Chanyeon’s garishly orange bunches at Lu Han’s wonderful, pretty face—she can’t help it, he’s just _so perfect_ —and trying to ignore Kim Jungda’s terrible jokes. Jungda is a strange girl, because her jokes are weirdly, inappropriately sexual, and worse than Chanyeon’s, which is an impressive feat because Chanyeon’s jokes aren’t even funny.

Jungda is a strange girl, Jungin thinks, because she’s a bizarre combination of incredibly girly and tomboyishness that Jungin’s never encountered before. She is tiny and has long hair that’s usually left loose and messy, though sometimes, like today, she adds ribbons, and her socks are too long and her skirt too short, but she eats with her mouth open and she tells inappropriate jokes at lunchtime, and is entirely in love with Advanced Maths.

Then again, Jungin doesn’t really have any _normal_ friends. There’s Chanyeon, a giant, with her hair which breaks at least three school rules and her overeager enthusiasm for life in general. She loves everything about life and everyone in it. There’s Byun Baekhwa, who is just as little as Jungda and wears her uniform short and her hair around her shoulders and whose dreams include meeting her idols from So Nyeo Shi Dae and becoming the next best solo singer. There’s Do Kyungri who is even tinier than Baekhwa and Jungda and whose eyes are too big for her face. Her uniform is too long for her and she’s meek but hilarious when she gets into things, and she’s one hell of a cook—Jungin has always thought she should be a chef one day. Finally there’s Oh Seyoung, the baby of their group at fifteen years old, a couple of months younger than Jungin herself. She’s tall and gangly and she has a big heart but doesn’t show it a lot because she gets hurt easily, so people often think she’s cold.

Jungin likes to think of herself as their leader. She’s the same age as most of them, verging on sixteen, and she’s the person with the best ideas. She’s funny and she cares for them and she’s been their leader for so long she doesn’t know what to do with herself except be with them and stare at Lu Han.

Lu Han is an upperclassman and she’s never spoken to him, because he’s eighteen years old and a boy and that’s completely frowned upon. She only knows his name because he’s friends with Wu Yifan, who is from Canada and vocal and took some getting used to the way their school works. Everyone knows Yifan, so she knows about Lu Han. And ever since she first saw him she’s watched him through Chanyeon’s hair as he sits two tables across from theirs. Her favourite moments are when he laughs at something Yifan or his other two friends say, because he tilts his head back and his eyes crinkle and sometimes he laughs so loudly she can hear him. His voice is beautiful.

She’s staring at Lu Han when there’s a crash, and she drags her eyes away from Lu Han and stands to look over Chanyeon’s head. The Chinese girl in the corner is on her knees in kimchi and Jungin frowns at the two boys standing over her, but she does nothing. She sits back down. There’s a thumping in her chest that’s angry—the girl is young and has no friends because she doesn’t speak Korean. If this were a normal school, Yifan would probably have taken her under his wing, or girls in her own year would have befriended her, but it’s not a normal school, and she’s alone.

“We have to do something,” Baekhwa says, as one of the boys hits the girl. “That’s not allowed—they can’t touch her. They’re not _allowed_.”

Jungin bites her lip, feeling the sympathy burn along her scalp where the boys are hurting the girl. She wants to go over, she wants to stop it, but she can’t. She’s worked too hard to lose everything.

But she doesn’t have to. There’s a girl who she hadn’t noticed before, even tinier than Kyungri, if that’s possible, her hair in two long, long plaits. Her uniform isn’t clean; she’s got dirt up her socks, and her slippers are scuffed, but she holds herself in a way that makes the dirt seem insignificant. Jungin’s never seen her before.

The girl slams her tray onto a table of frowning girls Jungin knows from English and Economics and then runs over to the boys.

“She must be new,” Jungin says, watching the girl. Her eyes drift over to Lu Han, and she can see he’s watching, too, as the girl, all five feet of her, places her hands on her hips and looks up at the boys. One of them slaps her, his friend’s hair tangled in the Chinese girl’s, trying to lift her up by her hair as she sobs. The new girl stays on her feet and crosses her arms, and Jungin wishes she could see the expression on her face because it seems to shake the two boys, and they turn and run away.

A second later, so does the Chinese girl.

Jungin is kind of awestruck, so she watches the aftermath even as other people grow bored. The girls at the table the new girl placed her lunch shove it off in much the same way the boys shoved the Chinese’s girl’s lunch off the table. Jungin can see her face above her green collar (fourth year, then)—soft and pretty, with gentle eyebrows and clear, pale skin—, and it flits through dismay, to irritation, and settles on a warm and decidedly pretty smile. Jungin watches as she cleans up her lunch, and then the Chinese girl’s, and leaves the room without looking behind her.

Jungda is also watching, and she breathes, “Cool!” once the girl’s left, her eyes wide and warm with admiration. Everyone at the table turns to her, and she blushes, hard, trying to hide behind her dark hair.

Jungin shakes her head. “But stupid,” she says. “Nobody’s going to be friends with her now.”

Jungda’s face falls. “Can’t we?” she asks, her eyes watering slightly. She leans across Baekhwa to clasp Jungin’s hand. Her hands are small, her pink nail polish chipped. Jungin doesn’t wear nail polish, but she would for Lu Han.

“Do you want to ruin everything we’ve built up over the past two years?” Jungin asks her, brushing her long fringe out of her eyes with her free hand, securing it in her Kirby grips. “Just so some stupid sunbae doesn’t feel alone?”

Jungda’s tears overflow and she looks crestfallen. Jungin feels sorry for her, but there’s nothing she can do about it. “I just wanted to do something for her,” she says through her tears. Kyungri, next to her, wraps her arm around Jungda and rubs her arms comfortingly. Kyungri has always been a little like their motherly figure, because she fusses over them and makes sure they’ve eaten and wraps scarves around their necks so they don’t get cold.

Jungin bites her lip but doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing she can say to console Jungda. She knows, deep down, that if she were any less concerned about how the school would treat her, she would welcome both the new girl and the Chinese girl she’d protected with open arms. But she’s scared, and she won’t risk her and her friends’ futures on two misfits.

\---

Yifan is angry.

Zhang Yixing can tell this because the tall boy, who has dark hair and a dark presence, is quiet and his eyes are tightly closed, and he’s completely motionless, which spells danger. This is the kind of angry Yifan gets when he’s going to punch something, or someone, and it’s usually in connection with the small Chinese girl. It’s not the first time Yixing has encountered it, because the girl gets picked on a lot, and he’s got pretty good at working out how to help Yifan calm down. A lot of the time body contact helps.

He leans over to cover Yifan’s hand with his, trying to calm him down. For once it doesn’t work and Yifan shakes his hand off before standing up and storming away.

Yixing exchanges a bewildered glance with Kim Minseok and Lu Han, his other best friends, both of whom are fifth years who look much younger than their age, before Lu Han makes a shooing movement and rolls his eyes. Yixing quickly realises what the older boy wants him to do when Lu Han does it again and Minseok pokes at him. He stands as well and runs after Yifan.

When he finds him a few moments later, Yifan is standing outside the front door of the school, on the steps, fists tightly clenched. He turns when he hears Yixing, and he sighs. “I hate this school,” he says darkly.

“I know,” Yixing replies softly. Yifan has never really settled in here.

For Yixing, he had known absolutely no Korean when he came to the school, but Lu Han was already here, fluent in Mandarin and Korean, and Yixing was able to communicate with him. He learnt the ropes of the school as he learnt the language. But Yifan was different. Yifan grew up in Canada, where things are very different, and he already knew Korean, so there wasn’t that boundary. For him everything has always been so much harder. Yixing wants to chalk it up to cultural differences but he can’t entirely blame them. He thinks it’s partially Yifan’s personality, too. Yifan is the boy you want for your knight in shining armour. He’s the boy mothers want their daughters to marry. He’s the boy Yixing can’t help but—he’s _that_ boy. He’s noble, honourable, and he cares far more than his blank exterior would lead you to believe.

“I just—that girl,” Yifan says, his fists so tight he could cut his palms with his nails. Yixing runs to take his hands, loosening them. Yifan pulls out of one of his hands immediately and Yixing feels slighted as Yifan uses it to push his hair back off his face, but Yifan keeps the other one, and Yixing can feel him calm a little with the body contact. Yixing wishes there was more he could do for him. He always wishes there was more he could do, but it’s not always for Yifan’s benefit. “If this were anywhere else I’d have gone in and punched those guys. If this were anywhere else we’d probably be friends with her, and we’d probably be friends with the new girl, and the girl with the glasses with the bow on them who sits two tables over and stares at Lu Han during lunch even though she thinks we don’t notice.”

“But we’re _here_ ,” Yixing says, trying to be reasonable, and rubs Yifan’s fingers with his thumb. “And that’s against the rules. I’m as angry about it as you are.” This isn’t true because Yifan is _livid_ , but Yixing is angry enough. He remembers the look on the girl’s face when her hair was pulled and cringes—it must have been worse for Yifan. It wasn’t like this back in China. Sometimes he wishes he was back there, but then he remembers that he wouldn’t have met Yifan. Yifan makes it worth it, he thinks. “At least we could get them in trouble for interfering with a girl.”

Yifan bites his lip. “I—I wish there was a way to break the rules,” he says. “Just so I can—” He shakes his head and Yixing doesn’t know what he was going to say. He doesn’t ask. Yifan has always been protective of that girl, and he doesn’t know why. He’s never asked. He supposes it has something to do with feeling like an outcast.

Yixing shakes his head because he doesn’t have any suggestions. How can they break the rules without getting caught? He doesn’t want to know what’ll happen to them if they are. “Just—at least don’t do anything silly,” he says, biting his lip and squeezing Yifan’s hand lightly. “You don’t want to get kicked out. Think about someone you love, it might stop you doing something stupid.” His chest hurts as he says it, but Yifan is loving, and filial, and will probably (hopefully) think of the look on his mother’s face if he gets expelled. Yixing doesn’t want to think about Yifan thinking about the Chinese girl’s face. He doesn’t want it to hurt more than it has to.

Yifan stares past him for a moment, eyes unseeing, before he nods. “Okay, I won’t. Let’s go back inside,” he says, breathing calmer, and he finally lets go of Yixing’s hand. Yixing feels cold, empty without the warmth against his palm, but he says nothing, instead following Yifan back inside.

The rest of lunch passes in a daze, and then his classes. The new girl, he notices, the one who stood up to the boys, is called Kim Junhee and she’s in his Maths class in the afternoon (he thinks she’s in his History class, too, but he can’t really remember), and she’s good. She whizzes through all of the problems in ten minutes. Yixing, who has never been particularly good at Maths, wonders if she’d help him learn—outside of school, of course.

And that’s when he gets the idea. They can’t talk during school time, but there’s nothing to keep them from talking outside of school. He has no idea why nobody’s thought of it before.

Once school is finished he tries to follow her to her locker, but everyone moves so quickly he can’t find her, and he looks too suspicious standing by the entrance to the girls’ lockers anyway. He’ll try again tomorrow, he thinks, and heads to the front of the building to wait for Lu Han and Yifan. They live together, the three of them, in a little flat. It’s cheap because it’s so small and Yixing and Yifan’s parents help to pay for it. Yixing loves it, loves living with them. He wishes they could stay like that forever.

As they walk home, Lu Han’s hand in his and Yifan’s crooked around his bicep, Yixing tells them about his idea, and they nod their heads and agree that it’s not an entirely stupid plan, and Yixing feels satisfied.

\---

The next day when Junhee gets to school, early again, the second year girl is there already, biting her thumbnail and looking around her as if looking for someone or something. She’s really pretty when she’s not crying, Junhee thinks. Her hair is long and loose today, wavy with little curls running through it, and she’s wearing thin-rimmed glasses, which help to hide the bags under her eyes. The urge to hug her is still there. Junhee smiles.

When she sees Junhee standing there, the girl’s eyes light up, and she runs down the steps to meet her. “Unnie,” she says, and her voice is strong and accented. She fumbles around in her bright pink backpack for a moment and comes out with a clear Tupperware box, which she thrusts at Junhee. “Unnie,” she repeats.

Junhee takes the box from her and opens it. She’s never seen the food that’s inside before but it looks and smells wonderful. “Thank you,” she says, and reseals the box. “But why are you giving it to me?”

The girl merely blinks at her, smiling. “Good?” she asks.

“Yes,” Junhee agrees, but she feels guilty taking food from this girl, and she hands it out again. “Is this your lunch?” she tries again.

“For unnie,” the girl says, and pushes the box back to Junhee’s chest. “I make. Thank you.”

“Ah,” Junhee says, feeling a little better that the girl isn’t just giving Junhee her own food, but she still feels a little awkward that the young girl is giving her food anyway. She pauses for a moment, trying to think of what to say, as the girl’s grasp of Korean is clearly shaky. “I’m Junhee,” she says.

“Zitao,” the girl says, pointing to herself.

“Nice to meet you,” Junhee says, and Zitao beams.

Junhee leads Zitao to her locker, and she drops her bag inside, switching her shoes quickly and taking out her morning books. Zitao looks around herself as if seeing with new eyes and Junhee smiles to herself, before taking Zitao’s hand in hers. “Where’s yours?” she asks, and Zitao, understanding, leads her through to the girls’ lockers, where she does the same as Junhee. Her socks, which looked white at first glance, actually have panda faces on her toes, and Junhee thinks they’re adorable.

“You like pandas?” she asks, and Zitao smiles sunnily at her.

“Pandas,” she says, nodding. “China. Panda.” And she points to herself. Junhee isn’t entirely sure if she’s referring to herself as a panda or for China. She presumes that means Zitao’s Chinese, but she can’t be sure. She must look confused, because Zitao rubs her fingers along the dark circles under her eyes and repeats, “Panda.”

“Ah,” Junhee says, understanding, and she smiles. “Zitao-panda.”

Zitao nods, beaming, and Junhee thinks she’s the most adorable person in the world (how could anyone hate or want to hurt her?) and resolves to teach her Korean, because clearly nobody is trying hard enough.

\---

Neither the Chinese girl, nor the new girl, show up for lunch that day. Jungin wouldn’t have noticed, but Jungda looks miserable, and Lu Han seems slightly agitated when she looks over at him. This seems to stem from Yifan who looks stony-faced. One of his friends isn’t even there, and the other one, the round-faced boy, is picking at his food. She’s never known the table to look so glum before. Usually they’re laughing.

She wonders what’s got them so miserable, and if this were any other school she’d walk over and try to cheer them up, when Baekhwa says, “I think Yifan-oppa’s sad because the Chinese girl isn’t here today. He looks out for her, you know.”

Jungin looks at her with surprise, because she hasn’t noticed. “Really?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Baekhwa says. “Haven’t you noticed how angry he gets when she’s picked on?”

Jungin shakes her head, because she rarely looks at anyone but Lu Han.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Baekhwa says with a sigh, and she rolls her eyes. “But I think he likes her, or something.”

Jungin blinks at her, and spends the rest of the day selfishly thinking that at least it isn’t Lu Han who the girl has under her spell, because she doesn’t know what she’d do if he was.

\---

Yixing spends the day trying to subtly stalk the girls. He learns they’re now friends, and as such spend most of their time together. They eat in one of the classrooms at lunchtime, communicating in stilted words and hand movements, and Yixing wants so badly to just go in there and chat with them, but he can’t.

He learns that Junhee’s locker is in the boys’ section, which makes it much easier for him to head over and slide a note between the door and the edge, waiting until it drops in before leaving, looking around him constantly as if a teacher’s hiding and they’re going to jump out and surprise him with a suspension.

He’s written his name and his phone number and a note to call outside of school-time, but nothing else. He thinks, should it fall into wrong hands, at least this way he won’t get into much trouble.

The rest of the day passes as slowly as it could ever pass. Yixing taps his fingers on the table and more than once a teacher asks, “Is there something boring you, Yixing?” which draws attention to him. He finds Junhee looking at him at least twice, one of her eyebrows raised, and he looks away quickly.

When it’s time to leave, he all but races home with Yifan and Lu Han, and spends the time he should be doing his homework bouncing on the balls of his feet until Yifan lifts him and bodily drops him onto their sofa and turns the television on.

It feels like a long, long time before Yixing’s phone rings, and it’s his mother anyway, asking him how he is. He grows thoroughly miserable, wondering if Junhee even found his note.

“He’s like a little boy with a crush,” he hears Lu Han giggle to Yifan in the kitchen, and he pouts. He is _not_. He knows this because he already _has_ a crush, so he knows what he acts like with one. Though he’s not entirely sure it counts as a crush anymore because being around Yifan has started to actually _hurt_.

It’s past dinnertime the next time his phone rings, and he’s half-given up. He’s watching a film with Lu Han, the elder’s legs in his lap, a bowl of popcorn precariously on the chair beside him. He answers it with an almost tired, “Hello?”

“Um, is this Yixing-sshi?” a girl’s voice asks, and Yixing perks up immediately, sitting upright and upsetting the popcorn all over Lu Han’s legs.

“Junhee-sshi?” he asks, smiling. Lu Han rolls his eyes and starts tipping popcorn back into the bowl.

“Um,” she says, and he can hear her confusion and awkwardness. “Yes.”

Now he’s talking to her, everything he’s wanted to say floats away, and he can’t think of the words. It’s been years since he talked to a girl. He thinks he might have been fourteen, when girls were still a bit strange and confusing. “Um,” he echoes, and stands, shoving Lu Han’s legs off his lap and upsetting the popcorn bowl for the second time. He moves into his and Lu Han’s bedroom and shuts the door. If he’s going to make a fool of himself, he’d rather Lu Han doesn’t hear. “I wanted to ask you if you’d, um, tutor me in Maths.” And then he adds, barrelling on hastily, “It’s okay if you don’t, but, um, I’m useless and you know what school is like and you’re new so—”

She laughs, the sound twinkling and pretty and he thinks that if he liked girls that would be a noise he could fall in love with. “Sure,” she says. “I did notice you were having some trouble.” There’s an awkward pause before she says, “Actually, I have something to ask you, too.”

“Yes?” he asks, wondering what she wants.

“You’re Chinese, right? I mean it’s not obvious but—your name.”

“Yeah,” he says, still confused, brow furrowed.

“Do you think you could teach Zitao Korean? I would, but I think it might help her if someone can translate for her.”

“Who’s Zitao?” Yixing asks, and then instantly realises the moment he’s said it. “Oh, the second year girl? Yeah, sure, Yifan-ge can teach her.” Though Lu Han would probably be a better choice, he knows that Yifan will just interrupt anyway. His hand around the phone tightens reflexively, and he has to force himself to loosen his grip.

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” Junhee gushes, and Yixing smiles widely at her joy, even as his chest hurts from the fact someone else will take Yifan away from him, even for a little while.

They make arrangements of when and where to meet, deciding on Yixing’s flat because it’s easier, and when they hang up, Yixing feels immensely satisfied, like he’s just made a new friend.

\---

The next day, after school, Junhee nervously heads, with Zitao, to Yixing’s flat. Once there, the door is opened by the elf-like boy she’d seen on the first day. Unlike the girls, he’s out of his school uniform, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

“Hello!” he says, with a smile. “You must be Junhee and Zitao. I’m Lu Han.”

He leads them into the flat. It’s tiny, and leads into a little corridor with only five doors leading out. Lu Han leads them through to the sitting room, where Yixing and another boy, the tall one, are sitting on the sofa. Yixing bounces to his feet when he sees them, whereas the other boy looks up and smiles, slow and steady. Out of the corner of her eye, Junhee sees Zitao’s eyes sparkle.

“Hi,” Yixing says to Junhee, and then he turns and says something to Zitao in Mandarin that has a flurry of language flowing from her mouth, her hands up and moving in an animated way. Junhee smiles fondly.

The other boy, Yifan, Junhee presumes, leads Zitao out of the room with a reassuring smile at Junhee, and Junhee settles down on the sofa with a textbook in her hand. “What do you need help with?” she asks, and they begin working.

\---

It becomes their routine over the next few weeks. Junhee heads over twice a week to help Yixing, and they become sort-of friends. Yixing shares secrets with her—like the fact Lu Han has an admirer he isn’t supposed to know about, and that Yifan is actually soft-hearted and can’t bear to see anyone in pain, even if he pretends to be cold—and Junhee wishes they could hang out at school. All of the boys are extremely nice and she wants to be friends with them forever.

She’s pretty sure that Zitao goes over far more often, because soon her Korean is at pre-intermediate level and serviceable and she starts making noises about wanting to talk to some of the other girls in her year.

“They only didn’t talk to me because I knew no Korean,” she says. “Now my Korean is better, I’m sure they’ll talk to me.”

Junhee isn’t sure if she’s right, but she doesn’t want to let her down. They sit together in the classroom during lunch every day and neither of them talks to other girls, even though Junhee thinks she might have a chance, if she tries. She’s sure there are nice girls in her year who would talk to her.

The girl Zitao wants to talk to most is a tall girl with long brown hair and a stoic expression. Junhee has seen her around a bit. She’s usually with a pretty girl with Hello Kitty glasses and her hair pulled back off her face. If Junhee were honest, she might admit to liking when Zitao drags her around after them, because of the view. But she hardly wants to admit to the attraction she feels towards the younger girl.

It’s not that Junhee isn’t aware of her feelings, or, worse, dislikes them. She’s had a long time to realise that boys hold no attraction for her at all. She knows it can’t be anything to do with going to a single-sex school, because there were plenty of girls there who were interested in boys. But she’s never felt interested in them.

Instead, she’s grown fond of long, slim legs in shorts and short skirts, small breasts and curved hips, long hair. She is well aware she likes girls, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But she doesn’t know this girl. Although it might be easier to crush on a girl she doesn’t know, Junhee wants, so badly, to be friends with her—and she doesn’t want to jeopardise anything. So she doesn’t admit that she has a crush on the girl—not even to herself.

Zitao doesn’t want to talk to the girl when her friends are around, understandably enough, Junhee thinks, but she takes Junhee along with her for moral support anyway. She squeezes Junhee’s hand once and then lets go, walking away from Junhee. The older girl stays beside the same locker and watches her younger friend walk over to the girl who is, mercifully, away from her attractive friend for once.

“Hi,” Zitao says, shyly, and the girl looks at her in surprise for a moment, before looking over her shoulder. “Oh Seyoung!” Zitao says, and Junhee can imagine her face, a mixture of amused and crossed, the pout that would have appeared on her face.

“Me?” Seyoung asks, and her face settles into confusion.

“Yes!” Zitao says, and then, “we are in almost all our classes together, but we never speak.”

Seyoung nods. “Yes,” she agrees. “You sit in front of me in Geography, don’t you? Um—Zitao?” She says it all wrong, and not the way Zitao introduced herself to Junhee, all lilting tones and hard ‘ts’, but Zitao nods her head frantically. Junhee is sure that Zitao is smiling now, warm and delighted, as she realises Seyoung actually knows who she is. She looks over her shoulder at Junhee, and there it is—the smile radiant and pretty. Junhee smiles back at her. This isn’t going at all as bad as she had thought it might.

Zitao tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, nervously, as if she doesn’t know what to say now she’s started, but Seyoung rescues her. “Did you do the homework for English? It was horrible, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Yes,” Zitao agrees. “It was really horrible.” The bell rings, and Zitao turns to wave to Junhee before walking away with Seyoung. Her smile is still enormous. Junhee waves back and heads to her own class, feeling relieved that Zitao’s found someone else to talk to, who didn’t immediately mock her. There’s still a worry in her heart that they won’t become friends, but she puts it aside. She can’t, and won’t, always be there for Zitao.

\---

“So,” Seyoung says, as they sit around their usual table. Jungin isn’t really paying attention. Chanyeon’s bunches are so huge today they block Jungin’s entire view of Lu Han, and that _really_ isn’t on. “I talked to Zitao today.”

“Who’s that?” Baekhwa asks, looking up and away from her mobile long enough to peer at Seyoung in surprise. Seyoung rarely instigates conversations.

“The Chinese girl,” Seyoung says, and that brings Jungin’s attention away from the fact that Lu Han’s hair is starting to show his roots—not that Jungin even cares too much.

“You spoke to her?” she says, not even bothering to disguise the surprise in her voice.

“Yeah,” Seyoung says. “She’s been learning Korean. She’s pretty good now.”

“How is she?” Kyungri asks, as Baekhwa turns back to her phone as it beeps, and she giggles, pulling her hand up to cover her mouth. “Stop texting your boyfriend, Baekhwa, and pay attention to your maknae,” Kyungri scolds.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Baekhwa says, even though they all know Lee Jinki is. He’s a boy she met online what seems like forever ago to Jungin, who can’t remember a time when the two of them weren’t texting. They haven’t met yet, but all of them know what he both looks and sounds like, having held Skype chats with him before. He and Baekhwa are adorable together, Jungin thinks absently, although she is jealous that their oldest got a date before she, their leader, did.

Kyungri ignores her as if she hadn’t said anything. “Zitao,” she repeats. “How is she? What’s she like?”

“She’s sweet,” Seyoung says, and then blushes. “She’s got this kind of cute way of speaking. I think you would all like her.”

“Oh?” Chanyeon says, and then laughs, nudging Seyoung, briefly moving enough that Jungin can see the tip of Lu Han’s head around her. Jungin feels her smile grow at the sight of him. “Sweet? Someone’s got a crush!”

“I have not!” Seyoung protests, “We only just met!”

“You say that, and then it’ll be googly eyes, and we all know what those are like!” Chanyeon teases.

Jungin knows that she’s one of the people Chanyeon is referring to, but she’s too happy to feel offended.

“What about her friend?” Jungda pipes up, leaning over the table to look up at Seyoung earnestly. “How’s she?”

Seyoung shrugs. “I think she’s fine. I think Zitao said she’s really busy at the moment. She’s a Maths tutor.”

Jungda’s eyes almost seem to sparkle. “She likes Maths?” she asks. “Can she get any more perfect?” She drops her chin to her wrist on the table and smiles dreamily up at everyone.

“To prove my point,” Chanyeon adds, waving at Jungda, a wide grin on her face.

“Hold your horses, girl,” Jungin says. “You don’t even know her name.”

“It’s Junhee,” Seyoung offers helpfully.

Jungda sighs even more dreamily. “Junhee…” she breathes. Jungin glares at Seyoung, who shrugs back at her innocently.

“I know you said, before,” Seyoung says, “but—but I’m going to ask Zitao to have lunch with us, I think.”

Jungin looks at her for a moment, trying to think what she said—and then it comes back to her. Nobody would be friends with Junhee after she stood up to those boys. And nobody wants to be friends with Zitao because it’d reflect on them. She remembers the feeling of not wanting to lose everything she’s built up, and then sighs. _Like it matters._ “Do as you like.”

Seyoung smiles properly for the first time in what seems like ages.

“Are you going to ask Junhee, too?” Jungda asks. She somehow manages to sound both pathetic and really excited at the same time. Jungin isn’t quite sure how she manages it.

“I think they come as a package deal,” Seyoung says, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m sure she’ll come too. Be nice, unnies.” The honorific comes as a surprise to all of them, because Seyoung rarely uses them.

“Well, that’s settled,” Jungin says, and slides slightly out of her seat to try to catch another glimpse of Lu Han.

\---

Junhee is nervous when they go to sit with the group of girls. It has been a long time since she was friends with so many, and she hopes she makes a good impression on them. She knows they aren’t really trying to make friends with her. She was only invited because Zitao would never have gone without her.

There are two new chairs at the table, between Seyoung and a girl with long black hair tied into huge bunches with the largest pink ribbons Junhee has ever seen. Zitao sits next to Seyoung, so Junhee sits next to the other girl, who is smiling widely at her. Junhee wonders why.

“I’m Zitao,” Zitao introduces herself first, and then smiles at Junhee gently.

“Hello,” Junhee says nervously to the other girls, bowing a little at the table. “I’m Junhee. Thank you for inviting us to sit with you.” She says this bit mostly to Seyoung, and does her best to keep her eyes off the pretty girl with the Hello Kitty glasses who’s sitting next to her.

“It’s no problem, Junhee-sshi,” Seyoung says. “I’m sorry I didn’t invite you sooner.”

The other girls nod at that. “Yeah, we’re sorry,” the girl next to Junhee says, and she leans over to touch Junhee’s wrist gently. Her nails are the same colour as her ribbons. “We _should_ have invited you earlier.”

They introduce themselves after that. The girl next to her is Jungda. The girl with the frizzy orange bunches is Chanyeon—they bounce as she talks, unlike Jungda’s which are remarkably tamer. The girl with the short brown hair is Baekhwa, and the girl with the big glasses and pigtails is Kyungri.

The girl with the Hello Kitty glasses is their leader and she’s called Jungin. Junhee swallows. Knowing her name is not a good thing. Not when it’ll give her something to whisper late at night, at least.

The girls are all incredibly friendly. They do their best to make Junhee and Zitao feel at home, and Junhee is really grateful for that, and after a little while she loosens her hand from Zitao’s, where she had slipped it once the nerves settled in. She can handle this. If she could handle talking down two upperclassmen all those weeks back, she can handle talking to a group of kind girls who are almost all a year younger than her, their collars yellow.

Chanyeon, Junhee learns, is funny, seeming to take her role as mood-maker seriously. She has Junhee cracking up within fifteen minutes, body shaking as the laughter rips through her. Zitao, next to her, giggles as well, small hands coming up to wipe at her eyes. Kyungri is the gentle one, the one who talks the most sense. Junhee thinks she reminds her of herself; the mother of the group who listens intently to everything. She thinks if she ever has problems, she’ll go to her. Baekhwa is devious, the one who looks innocent but says things you don’t expect. She sees a lot more than she lets on. Jungda is—Junhee can’t really explain her. She’s quiet, but then she says something cutting, witty, that has Chanyeon rolling off her chair with guffaws. She’s also the girl who likes to touch the most, hands on Junhee’s, fingers in Baekhwa’s, hands tightening Chanyeon’s hair ties when her bunches start to droop miserably. Seyoung seems cold, but she’s actually kind when she whispers to Zitao, trying to explain things, just loudly enough for Junhee to hear as well. She seems to take it as her role to introduce their life to them.

Junhee learns little about Jungin except that she has a massive crush on Lu Han and spends most of their lunch period standing slightly out of her chair staring. Junhee’s chest aches when she realises that Jungin is the girl that Yixing was talking about all those weeks ago, the girl with the crush Lu Han knows about. The girl she likes also likes someone. It was never going to be Junhee, but it still hurts.

Junhee decides to stop the crush, then and there. It’ll do her no good to pine after someone who isn’t interested. But it’s much harder than it sounds to stop liking someone, even if she’s only liked her for a few months, and ultimately it doesn’t get easier.

In fact, over the next few weeks, as she gets to learn who Jungin really is, she finds her crush deepening and deepening until it’s less shallow and more about the girl under the beautiful body, and there’s only one thing she can do—seek help.

\---

“What is it like, liking someone for a long time?” Junhee asks him, as he’s working over a particularly hard Maths equation.

Yixing jerks his head up to look at her. She’s looking down at her fingernails, studying them closely, even though he’s sure they’re perfect. “…why?” he asks carefully, wondering what she knows.

She lets out a breathy laugh and looks up at him. “Come on, Yixing, it’s not like I don’t know.”

He stiffens slightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tries, looking back down at his work, although he’s sure she won’t give up.

“Yifan-oppa,” she says shortly.

He freezes entirely, glad they’re the only ones home. He curls his knees up to his chest, losing all pretence of denial. “How did you know?” he whispers.

“Every time he gets angry you hold his hands,” Junhee tells him softly. “The oppadeul send you after him because they know you’ll calm him down. Magic hands,” she jokes lightly. “And the way you look at him, the way you talk to and about him—Yixing, it’s obvious.”

“Not to him,” Yixing says. “He only thinks about Zitao.” He doesn’t say it bitterly, not any more. He likes Zitao well enough; he even thinks she’d be good for Yifan.

“Yixing, Zitao is like a little sister to Yifan,” Junhee says, and Yixing doesn’t understand the conviction in her voice. She sounds completely sure.

“How do you know?” Yixing asks her, the bitterness creeping back into his voice. “She’s all he ever talks about; Zitao said that she wants to go shopping so I’ll go with her. Zitao’s Korean is really coming along, isn’t it? Zitao is coming over so help me clean the house Yixing. Zitao this, Zitao that. I love her, really I do, but it hurts and I wish he’d shut up.”

“He’s just being an older brother,” Junhee assures him, and her expression is soft—but he can see something in her eyes that seems like sympathy mixed with familiarity.

“Why did you ask?” he tries again, and her cheeks warm up quickly.

“N-no reason,” she says.

“I just told you one of my biggest secrets,” Yixing said. “I know there’s something eating you up.”

She wrings her hands, looking everywhere but at him, and then it bursts out from her; “Jungin.” Her cheeks darken even more, and she buries her face in her hands.

Yixing honestly hadn’t known, but the discovery that she has an unrequited love like his own makes him stand and walk around the table towards her. She looks up at him in surprise and he tugs her to her feet before wrapping his arms around her and burying her head in his chest. “It gets better,” he says, finally answering her original question. “It never truly goes away, but it gets better, easier to live with. I like seeing Yifan every day.”

“I don’t know if I can take it,” she says. “I don’t know how bad it must be for you. It’s been a lot longer for you.”

“I manage,” Yixing says. “Looking after him is enough. Holding his hand is enough. Just being by his side is enough.” Yixing has had enough years with his own feelings for Yifan to know that anything is possible with a good mind-set. “And I have Lu Han to cuddle up to when it gets hard. And you have me,” he jokes.

She laughs into his chest, body shaking, and he rubs her back soothingly and wonders why it couldn’t have been her.

\---

The confidence Yixing gives her that everything will get better causes Junhee to break out of her shell a little and make it get better. She spends every lunch with Jungin’s friends, trying not to let her affections for Jungin show. She becomes much closer with Jungda, sleeping over at her house a few times. Jungda, Baekhwa tells her in hushed whispers, is always on her best behaviour around Junhee. Junhee doesn’t understand why, but she likes the girl’s personality and she likes her mother’s cooking, and it’s nice to do Maths homework with someone else for a change—someone who actually enjoys it.

After lunch it’s a different story. Junhee branches out, making friends with a girl in her Korean class, Jihyun, who is close with a girl called Hyojung in fifth year who soon Junhee becomes far closer with. Hyojung has a good circle of friends; Hyuna in third year, Bora in fifth year, Minyoung in the same year as Junhee. They’re nice girls, cute and friendly, and they’re very different from Jungin’s group of girls. These girls have innate sexiness; glamorous bodies, long hair they toss over their shoulders. Hyuna, Hyojung and Bora between them have pretty much control of the male eyes at school—even if they’re not allowed to touch or talk with them. Junhee sometimes doesn’t know why they like her so much. She had her moments at her old school; tight clothing, high heels, fake ID, and she feels comfortable like that, even if Juhyun was always a little judging of her choice in skirt length.

She’s not exactly sexy or glamorous, though, but she knows she can try. And they _do_ seem to like her. Plus, she appreciates the chance to make friends with other people. She can’t always be a burden on Jungin’s group.

So she hangs out with them, sleeping over at Hyojung’s house instead of Jungda’s at weekends, getting a chance to wear the somewhat sexy nightdresses her old friends had bought her for jokes, because she feels frumpy in her usual nightgowns next to the other girls. Hyojung sleeps in silk short shorts and a camisole that hides nothing, and Hyuna wears the smallest nightdress in the world and only a tiny silk thong underneath and Junhee figures that this is what being a school queen is all about.

\---

It’s a long time before Junhee is comfortable with the boys being near her house. It isn’t just the school rules, it’s also that she’s nervous of what her parents will think if she brings boys back. But one day it’s raining cats and dogs, thunder booming overhead, and she doesn’t have an umbrella, and as she walks home, the rain drenching her, Yifan drives up beside her and offers to take her home.

In the past few months she’s got closer with him and Lu Han. Sometimes she stays after her tutoring sessions with Yixing. Yixing and Minseok, when he’s over, offer her food, and she sits on their couch as they watch bad films and stuff popcorn into her mouth, though not enough so that she chokes. She likes them. Yifan, especially, is like a giant teddy-bear. He hugs her and pats her on the head and Junhee starts feeling like he’s the older brother she never had. She wants to be able to snuggle up to him at school but she can’t, so she makes do at his house, where he doesn’t mind if she curls up next to him, knees against his.

She sometimes worries about what Yixing thinks of all this, but he assures her that he doesn’t mind. He knows she hasn’t got a crush on Yifan, and Yifan knows it, too.

In fact, Yifan refers to her as his baby sister—even at school, Yixing tells her—and acts as protective as he can, even if there’s no need for him to. He says it’s instinctive, the way it is with Zitao. He says he feels like there’s something connecting them, even though he doesn’t know what it is.

Yifan walks her up to her front door, umbrella large over them, and she invites him inside, a spur-of-the-moment thing.

He sits on her couch as she heads into her bedroom to change her clothes, tugging off her wet school uniform and slipping into a short-sleeved black shirt and a knee-length skirt, before grabbing a small towel and rubbing at her hair. He’s still there when she walks back in.

“Oppa, you can watch TV, you know,” she teases, and then asks if he wants something to drink.

They’re watching bad (it’s always bad, with them) daytime television, Junhee snuggled into Yifan’s side, mugs of hot chocolate in front of them, when there’s a key in the lock of the front door. Junhee all but throws herself away from Yifan and smooths down her clothes as her father enters.

“Junhee,” he calls, “why is there a strange car outside our house?”

She stands up hastily, heading out into the hallway. “My friend gave me a lift home,” she says. “I offered him some hot chocolate.”

“Him?” her father asks, and then he freezes. “You…” he breathes, so quietly Junhee almost doesn’t hear.

She turns to look over her shoulder and sees Yifan standing in the doorway of the sitting room, body also strangely still.

“You’re—” Yifan says, before shaking his head. “You just remind me of someone, Sir. I’m Wu Yifan, I go to Junhee-sshi’s school.” It’s the first time he’s used that honorific with her; even when they were getting to know each other, he never used it, and she never asked him to. It sounds strange to hear it.

The look on her father’s face suggests he already knows that. Junhee doesn’t understand at all. She looks from her father to Yifan and then back again and something strange coils in her stomach, a feeling.

There’s something remarkably similar about their noses.

And their mouths.

And their eyes.

Junhee takes a step back, distantly hearing herself breathe, “No, no, no, no—” over and over again. This can’t be happening. It _can’t_.

“I’m Kim Heejae, Junhee’s father,” her father introduces himself, and she can see the bristle in Yifan’s shoulders as well.

“I should be going, Junhee,” Yifan says, and she wants to hug him, but the positioning of his shoulders stops her.

“Bye, Oppa,” she says softly, and her father stiffens even more.

Yifan leaves as quickly as he can. Junhee’s father waits until the car engine starts before he turns towards her. “When did you meet him?” he asks.

“Months ago,” Junhee says softly. “He’s really nice,” she adds.

“Stop being friends with him,” her father orders.

“I can’t,” she says. “I’m friends with his friends. Yixing, the boy I tutor?”

“Stop it, stop everything,” Junhee’s father commands. “I’m not having you friends with boys like that.”

“Boys like _what_?” she asks, frustrated tears welling up in her eyes. “Appa, what aren’t you telling me? What’s wrong with Yifan-oppa?”

Her father shakes his head, saying he won’t answer, and he turns away from her. Her tears overflow, streaking down her cheeks.

“Did you cheat on Umma?” she asks through her tears.

Her father turns back to her. He looks old, much older than he is, and ashen. “No,” he says. “I love your mother. But before I met your mother, I met _her_.” It’s another moment before he says, “I didn’t learn about him until after you were born.”

Junhee’s legs collapse beneath her, dropping her to the ground as his words sink in.

Yifan…

Her father…

_Yifan is her brother._

\---

Yifan had known the instant he laid eyes on Junhee’s father. Suddenly everything makes sense—how he looks nothing like his father, how his mother keeps photos of a man who isn’t his father hidden in her bedside table drawer, why every year they get a cheque and his mother will never explain to him what it’s for. And why he feels so protective of Junhee.

He stares at the phone for a few moments, his mother’s number lighting up the screen, before pressing the call button.

It’s late in Canada, but his mother picks up. “Kevin?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Kim Heejae,” Yifan says shortly. “When were you going to tell me, Mama?” He uses the Chinese word because everything about his identity feels strange. He always thought his father was Canadian Chinese.

Not Korean.

He hears the hiss of breath through her teeth. “Baby,” she says, “Kim Heejae may be the man who fathered you but he’s not your real father, you know this.”

“Why did you even do it, Mama?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It just happened. Nothing needs to change because of this, Baby.”

“I…” He sucks in a deep breath and tries again. “I have a sister.”

He can hear her do the same, but it’s in surprise. “Who is it?” she asks.

“Junhee,” he says. She knows about Junhee. He knows he talks about her and Zitao a lot—almost as much as he talks about Yixing, his best friend.

“Oh, Baby,” she says gently. “She is so lucky to have an older brother like you.”

Yifan ends the call with these words in his ears and a bubble in his throat that threatens to turn into tears. He tamps it down and instead goes to find Yixing.

\---

The next day at school Junhee does her best to avoid even looking at Yifan, because she doesn’t think she can take the newfound knowledge just yet. Yifan seems to be doing the same thing, so she doesn’t worry too much.

Hyojung asks her if she wants to go out with her and Bora and a few boys that night. “Maybe a film, and then a club,” she whispers. “Bring your fake ID.”

Junhee jumps at the chance to get away from her house, to get away from all of this, and she agrees excitedly. She races home once school is finished to get ready, thinking that finally she’s got a chance to shine.

She does her best to look pretty for the evening. It’s the first time she’s been out with people from the school who weren’t the boys, Zitao, or Jungin’s group. There are going to be pretty girls there (although not as pretty as Jungin), and some boys she doesn’t know, and so she thinks wearing a nice dress will help.

She does her makeup, making sure she looks a bit older than she is, gently slides contact lenses into her eyes, and slips into a pair of heels she bought with Juhyun and hasn’t had much opportunity to wear recently. They’re just as comfortable as she remembers and she feels at home like this, long hair brushed loose, just pulled a little out of her eyes, dress tight and short but not too much so, push-up bra giving her a figure a little better than before. This is how she always dressed with her female friends on nights out, back at her old school. She doesn’t feel comfortable enough to wear things like this around Jungin’s group, even though she thinks they’re really sweet. They’re just not the right kind of girl, even if she wishes they were, sometimes. She would love to be able to wear this kind of outfit around Jungin, if just to see if she reacts at all.

Junhee laughs to herself. Jungin probably wouldn’t see her if she stripped naked in front of her. She’s too busy staring at Lu Han all the time. It still hurts, knowing that Jungin will never see her as anything other than a friend.

When she’s ready she tells her parents—without looking at her father; she doesn’t think she can now she knows (or not for a while at least)—she’s going to stay over at Hyojung-unnie’s house and not to wait for her, and she heads out.

It takes her ten minutes to walk to the cinema, where Hyojung and Bora are waiting for her, along with three older boys Junhee doesn’t recognise from school. The tallest introduces himself as Ok Taecyeon, and the others are Jang Wooyoung and Lee Junho. They seem very nice—the kind of boys she would like if she were that way inclined.

The film they see is the newest horror film. Junhee hates horror films, is absolutely petrified by them, but she doesn’t want to look like she’s too scared so she goes in with them anyway.

The boys are spread evenly between the girls so they each have a hand to hold onto if need be, although Junhee is actually sure that Junho is holding onto Hyojung’s hand and not the other way around—she seems to be rather enjoying the film, if her quiet laughter is anything to go by. Bora is far less into it, because she’s covering her eyes and cowering a little.

Junhee is in the middle between Wooyoung and Taecyeon, and Taecyeon seems to the one angling to hold her hand, so she lets him. His hand dwarfs hers, small like the rest of her. He’s strong and sturdy and he pulls her to lean into him, so she does. He even covers her eyes when all the really bad parts come on, and she’s grateful for that.

At the end of the film, she feels comfortably warm along one side and the other girls quietly tease her about how cosy she was with Taecyeon, but she brushes it off easily. After all, she’s not into boys—not that they need to know that. She never got close enough with them she felt comfortable telling them. She hasn’t even told Jungin’s group. Yixing is the only one who knows—though she’s pretty sure Yifan has an inkling.

They go out clubbing afterwards. Junhee has her fake ID from her more daring days ready—even though they never danced with boys—so she’s able to go in with them, and Taecyeon buys her a couple of drinks. She stops at two, knowing her limits, but is perfectly happy to dance with him.

After a while he dances closer and closer until their hips bump, and she feels like she has to say something. “I’m sorry,” she says, leaning up to whisper into his ear, still feeling his hands hold her hips close to him. “I’m not into guys.” She leaves the _I’m in love with a girl_ off the end, and then wonders if maybe she should have just lied and said she was taken.

To his credit, he just laughs and shrugs it off. “Shame,” he says. “You’re so pretty. It would have been nice to try. Do you want to be friends though?”

“Sure,” she says, with a gentle smile. “I’d like that, Taecyeon-sshi.”

“Call me ‘oppa’,” he tells her with a smile to match hers, and she nods.

He brings her a coke after that, assuring her there’s no alcohol in it, and then, when she’s drinking it, asks if she wants to go back to his place to watch a film and maybe get to know each other a little better.

He seems really earnest, and his smile is so sweet, seeming like it could light up the room. She doesn’t feel threatened by him, so she says yes. They say goodbye to the others, who giggle not unkindly, Hyojung winking at her, and head back on the underground.

He doesn’t live far away from the club; only three stops. He lives in a flat on the second floor of what seems to be a really nice estate on the outskirts of town, flowers around the front of the building and a neat and clean children’s play area outside. There are several teenagers on the swings, but they’re not drinking or smoking, just sitting there talking.

As they walk up the flights of stairs, Junhee feels herself grow tired, slow and steady. Probably partying all evening—she hasn’t done this for a while now. None of her friends here really seem the partying sort (except maybe Chanyeon and Lu Han, who she thinks could probably party all night). She was never really one for doing it that often, either, so it’s not surprising. A film and a mug of coffee sounds like a good idea.

Taecyeon unlocks the door and lets her inside, and she slips out of her shoes and places them inside the door. “Would you like anything to drink?” he asks as she places her coat with the shoes, keeping her bag with her.

“A coffee, please,” she says, and heads into the sitting room and settles on the couch when he says she should.

A moment later there’s the comforting sound of the kettle boiling, and she begins to relax, her eyelids drooping. There’s something buzzing though, something that tells her that something is wrong with her tiredness, but she’s too tired to work out what it is.

There’s the sound of a coffee being made, and then Taecyeon comes back in a minute or so later and she can hear him hover above her. He places the coffee on the table. “Here’s your coffee,” he says, and she opens her eyes, leaning over to take it. She takes a few sips. It’s hot and comforting on her tongue and she smiles.

He stays like that, looking at her as she drinks, and his smile grows as she places the coffee back on the table. “You look so pretty like this,” he says, and then he kneels down beside her, and places a hand on her upper thigh.

She looks at him with confusion—what’s he doing?—, and there’s a strange look in his eyes. One that looks predatory. Her limbs grow leaden as she sits, and she yawns, and then she has a horrible thought. She looks down at the coffee, and then back up at him, and he grins again, and suddenly it all makes sense. The tiredness, the placidness, the willingness to come back to a stranger’s house.

He’s drugged her.

This nice, genial-seeming young boy has drugged her, and now she’s in his house alone, and he can do whatever he wants with her. She wants to cry, to scream, but she can’t summon the energy.

Sensing victory, he grabs her by her hair and then forcibly kisses her, working his tongue into her mouth, and then, when he pulls back, says, “You’re pretty in this dress, but I kind of want to see you out of it more.” He can’t work out how her dress works though, so he grabs the front and rips, until there’s a jagged tear down it, showing her bra to him. He hooks his fingers in it and pulls it down below her breast so he can see her nipple, and then he leans in to lick it, and there are hot, heavy tears cascading down her cheeks from the humiliation and horror, fear, of being caught in a situation like this. She’s smart. She should have known better.

“I’ll fuck the gay out of you,” he says. “You just haven’t met the right guy yet.”

He rips her dress from the bottom upwards and tugs down her underwear when he can reach it, down over her ankles, and throws them across the room, leaving her bare before him, and anger fills her, overpowering the misery. The drugs he’s given her haven’t fully taken over her yet, they’re still working through her system, and her legs still seem to be able to move, so she uses all her strength to kick up. One of her feet collides with his balls, without much momentum but still enough force to hurt, and her other, pulled up closer to her, hits his chest, forcing him back a few feet.

He’s taller and stronger than her, but she’s tiny, fast, and terrified, and it’s a good combination to be, because the adrenaline pumps faster, helping her.

She stumbles to her feet, grabs her bag, and runs to the door. He almost catches her, but she slams a hand out as she fumbles with the door latch, hitting him, and then she’s out of the door, and she runs down the stairs with all the speed and energy she is able to muster, a little surprised she doesn’t go tumbling down the stairs, and then she’s out and in the main street. She has the presence of mind to locate the direction of town, and then she’s off again, running down the pavement in a torn dress, no coat and no shoes, hair pulled loose and probably mascara running down her cheeks. She must look a mess, but she doesn’t care as long as she can find somewhere or someone safe.

She runs for what seems like hours, and she can hear him running behind her, gaining on her as the drugs start to work. Her eyes burn with tears and the wind and she feels like she’s going to drop soon, the adrenaline lessening, when she hears the most wonderful thing.

“Junhee?”

\---

It’s late on a Friday night and Yifan can’t sleep—he has so many things whirling about in his brain that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to. He tries to do his homework, but his mind won’t rest enough to do it, so he decides that maybe a walk outside will help him sleep.

He creeps out of his bedroom, trying not to wake Lu Han or Yixing, although he feels the compulsion to stop and look into their room before he leaves. With the little light that seeps into their room, Yifan can see Yixing is curled up into a tight ball on his bed, rocking backwards and forth like he’s having a nightmare, and Yifan feels a strange tightening in his chest that he has no explanation for, except maybe worry over his friend’s sleeping state. But there isn’t much he can do, he thinks, so he shuts the door and heads over to the front door, where he slides on his shoes, grabs his keys and his coat, and lets himself out quietly.

He walks down the high street slowly, trying to think over everything. Junhee is his little sister. One of the two girls he’s felt closest to since leaving Canada is of his own blood. It’s still strange to think of her like that, and at the same time, not strange at all. He’s always thought of her as something similar; her and Zitao, who he also wouldn’t hesitate to call family.

He would never call Kim Heejae his father, despite the fact they’re of the same blood, but Junhee is different. It’s a little strange, though, looking at her and _knowing_ they share blood. That she is his sister for real, and not in a Korean honorifics way.

Yifan’s walking down a quiet street when he hears the quiet patter of footsteps racing down the road, and he looks up to making sure he won’t walk straight into them. The first thing he sees is long, loose hair, and then he realises the girl’s dress is torn, and then—

He hisses. “Junhee?” he asks, and the girl freezes, and then throws herself at him, sobbing in a way that tugs at his heartstrings. He gathers her close to him. “Junhee?” he repeats softly, leaning down to be more her height. “What’s wrong?”

“Oppa,” she sobs. “Oppa, I’m scared.”

And then he sees the boy. He’s tall, almost as tall as Yifan himself, and looks menacing, eyebrows drawn and his mouth set into a scowl.

“What did you do to my sister?” Yifan snarls, drawing himself up to his full height, and he pushes her behind him, for protection. “If you did _anything_ to her, I will make you wish you weren’t born.”

The boy laughs, in a mocking way, as if he isn’t afraid. “What are you going to do to me?” he asks. “Your sister’s the one who can’t keep her knickers on.”

Yifan can feel Junhee cling closer to him, her hands on his waist, as the boy says this, and a rage fills him, unlike any he’s ever felt before when Zitao was being bullied. He sees red, and he pulls out of Junhee’s grasp and punches the boy in the jaw so hard he goes down, and he stays down. Yifan’s knuckles throb, covered in blood, and he cradles them to his chest. Some of the boy’s teeth litter the ground, and he mutters, “I hope he chokes.” Junhee is crying even harder when he turns back to her, and he wraps an arm around her and holds her close.

“Are you going to get into trouble?” she asks. “You hit him really hard.”

“He deserves it,” Yifan says vehemently. “Did he touch you?”

“He kissed me,” she says, “and he pulled my clothes off, and he—” She breaks off, to rub her chest. Yifan realises he must have touched her breasts and he wants to knock the boy out again. “But he didn’t—he didn’t. You know. I kicked him first, and then I ran away.” She leans into him, and says, “My feet hurt. I left my shoes and coat at his.”

Yifan scrambles immediately out of his coat, wrapping it around her to cover her ripped dress, but there isn’t a lot he can do about her feet. “Do you want to go home?” he asks, but she shakes her head. “Do you want to come back to mine?”

She bites her lip, and he can see her thought process. “I…I don’t want to get you into trouble,” she says, finally, and he smiles carefully at her, even though it’s a little late for that.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll call one of the girls then, give me your phone.”

She hands it to him, and he scrolls through the contacts list. He bypasses Zitao, knowing that she won’t be able to put Junhee up, and then he sees Jungin’s name, and the smile next to it, and he smiles softly, echoing it, and presses the call button. It’ll be better if she’s with someone she likes; maybe Jungin can calm her down.

\---

Jungin, on a rare night when her parents are out of the house, has just finished her homework and is about to get ready for bed when the call comes. She nearly ignores it, but when she sees Junhee’s name, she knows something must be up. Junhee never phones her past eight. Junhee rarely phones her at all.

“What is it, Unnie?” she asks, when she picks the phone up, and yawns.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?” comes a voice that’s distinctly not Junhee’s. “It’s an emergency.”

Jungin sits upright instantly. “Yifan-oppa?” she asks. “What’s happened?”

“Do you think Junhee could sleep at yours tonight?” he asks. “She can’t go home, and she’s—” He breaks off a moment and she can hear crying in the background. “Something bad happened,” he says. “And I think she needs the company to help her.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, frowning into her phone.

“That’s not my place to tell you,” he says. “But would that be okay?”

“Sure,” she says, feeling like she doesn’t really have any choice in the matter, and then gives her address.

“I’ll be with you in ten minutes.” And then he hangs up.

He’s there on time, just as he said, carrying a rather dishevelled looking Junhee on his back. When he sets her down, Jungin can see that under the oversized coat she’s wearing, her dress is ripped almost open, her bare feet are bleeding, and her makeup is all down her cheeks. She looks like something really bad has just happened to her, and Jungin can’t help but hug her, the urge in her chest too great to ignore.

“Thank you so much,” Yifan says. “I didn’t really know what to do. I knocked out the guy that touched her, so I need to go and—” He shrugs. “See to it, I suppose. I’ll pick her up tomorrow.” And then he’s gone.

It takes her a moment for the words to sink in. Someone _touched_ Junhee.

She all but reels in horror, somehow managing not to drop Junhee, and steers them inside and back to her bedroom. She then manoeuvres Junhee onto the bed, heads to the bathroom and grabs a washcloth for the girl’s face.

The girl is bright red when she gets back, and she’s wriggling uncomfortably on the bed. Jungin hands her the washcloth and she presses it to her face, trying to wash off the makeup and tearstains, but she stops partway through and drops it to the bed, placing her hands beside it and hanging her head.

Jungin leans over to touch her arm and Junhee makes a strangled sound before pulling back. There are tears burning in her eyes and Jungin sits on the bed beside her. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

Junhee bites her lip for a moment before saying, “The boy—I think he gave me something. At first it just made me really tired and my limbs really heavy, but now I—” She blushes heavily, even as the tears course down her cheeks.

“You’re?” Jungin prompts gently.

Junhee fidgets, and her eyes shut in shame, and somehow Jungin gets it from that, from the way she’s holding herself. She’s horny.

Jungin has a moment of discomfort. She’s in a room with a girl who needs to get off, and there aren’t really any other rooms she can do it, except maybe the bathroom, and Jungin will _know_. “Do you think you can sleep?” she asks unsurely, and Junhee’s shaking her head even as Jungin speaks.

“I think it’ll keep me awake,” she says. “Until I—” She shrugs as best as she can in this position, body leaning forward, hips moving slightly.

Jungin looks at her for a moment, her body shaking, the tears down her cheeks, the humiliation she must be feeling to be in some other girl’s room in this state, the confusion of whether to do anything about her problem, and makes a somewhat sleepy decision. It surely can’t be too different from getting herself off, right? Only she won’t be the one feeling it.

She moves so her back is against the wall and her legs are straight out before her, and says, before she loses her nerve, before her brain can start working again and jerk her out of this stupid thought-process, “I’ll help you, come here.”

Junhee freezes for a moment, looking at her with wide eyes full of shock and surprise. Jungin wonders if she shouldn’t have offered. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do? Maybe Junhee just needed to be pointed in the direction of the bathroom? Maybe Junhee is now afraid of her, thinking she’s some gay weirdo who offers to finger girls all the time? She’s sure most other girls wouldn’t have asked—certainly not straight girls.

But a moment later Junhee’s shoulders relax and it’s with obvious relief that she crawls over to Jungin and straddles her. “Thank you,” she breathes.

It’s weird, although Junhee is short and settles quite well into Jungin’s lap, but her dress is showing her bra, giving Jungin a generous view of bare cleavage, and Junhee clearly doesn’t know what to do with her hands, settling them, in the end, around Jungin’s neck. Jungin ignores all of that and slides one hand up Junhee’s thigh, which burns hot under her fingers.

Junhee moans, leans forward, and rests her head at the crook between Jungin’s neck and her shoulder. Her head is heavy, but Jungin ignores it, moving her hand under Junhee’s dress and upwards.

Junhee’s not wearing any underwear, and it surprises Jungin when her fingers slide automatically against wetness, but she composes herself, and quickly slips two fingers straight inside Junhee, hot and wet, who bucks against her instantly, crying out softly into Jungin’s shoulder. The feeling is strange, the tightness around her fingers, and she tries to ignore it.

Jungin thrusts her fingers in and out of Junhee, who is already thoroughly lubricated with arousal, and then she rubs at her clitoris with her thumb, circling it as she teases Junhee’s inside walls.

She imagines how it’d feel if she were doing it to herself, trying to make this situation less weird, and nearly gets wet herself at the thought of the sensations, thankfully halted by Junhee’s thighs trembling, her body lowering itself further onto Jungin’s fingers, as she comes, moaning into Jungin’s shoulder.

Junhee still looks embarrassed as she climbs off Jungin’s lap, Jungin’s fingers slipping out, but she looks grateful as well. “Thank you,” she whispers, a second time. “I’d never have asked.”

Jungin doesn’t know what to say to that, so instead she goes to wash her hand. When she comes back, Junhee’s asleep in a ball at the end of the bed, her dress revealing her nudity. Jungin drapes a blanket over her, curls up at the other end, and goes to sleep as well.

\---

Yifan reaches the spot he’d knocked the guy out to find the police, and an ambulance, already there. Somebody had phoned them and they are asking around for witnesses.

Yifan wonders, for a moment, if he should confess, explain his reasons for doing it, but he quickly realises that nobody had seen anything, and the guy is still knocked out.

Despite the lack of witnesses, it seems, from the statements being taken, that several people had heard their argument, or more that they’d heard the tone the jerk had used when laughing about Junhee, and they all seem fairly scathing.

“The girl was clearly terrified,” one man says. “I think he was going to hurt her. Her Oppa was right.”

Yifan decides that if they come after him they will—and they probably will; all they need to do is find Junhee and her brother—, but he’s certainly not going to volunteer anything first, so he heads home, hands in his pockets, dragging his feet after him.

When he arrives home, Yixing is awake, curled up on the couch. He looks tired and more than a little worried. “Ge,” he says, when he sees Yifan, and something pulls at Yifan’s heart, remembering the uncomfortable way Yixing had been sleeping, and he settles beside Yixing and wraps his arms around him.

“Something terrible happened,” he says. “Just let me have this.”

If anything, Yixing sinks into his hold, clinging on as if his very life depends on it. They hold each other for a very long time, and Yifan eventually falls asleep, and has pleasant dreams, even though he wouldn’t have expected them. He’s sure they’re because of Yixing.

When Yixing tells him he also slept well, Yifan’s heart sings, though he’s not really sure why.

\---

When she wakes up, Junhee seems to have no recollection of anything that happened the previous night past leaving the nightclub.

Jungin isn’t sure whether she should be grateful about this or not. The memory of the previous night haunts her. She’s fucked another girl with her fingers. She’s supposed to be straight, devoted to Lu Han, but she’s already sort-of had sex—she’s not a virgin anymore. Now, every time she looks at Junhee, especially when she sees her in a t-shirt and skirt of Jungin’s, all she can think is _I had my fingers inside you_ , and _I got you to come_.

The worst part, though, is that Junhee had no idea why she woke up in Jungin’s house in a ripped dress, and just about burst into hysterical tears. It had taken Jungin ten minutes to calm her down enough to tell her that Yifan-oppa would explain it all to her better. That had helped a little bit.

Jungin wonders if it’s PTSD or a side-effect of the drugs she was given, as if that’ll make the fact that Junhee doesn’t remember anything any better. It doesn’t.

Yifan arrives to take her home around half eight in the morning, and Junhee clings to him instantly, like a scared little girl. Jungin can tell he’s also confused about her lack of memory, but he seems willing to tell her everything he knows. “Thanks, Jungin,” he says, as they leave. “I owe you.”

She nods silently, thinking he owes her rather a lot.

\---

She manages to last the day without thinking too much about what had happened, but finally during the afternoon of Sunday she cracks, as she daydreams about Junhee in her lap, and how many things she could have done with her like that, all the places she could have put her hands, and how she didn’t even get to see her naked, as she kept her fingers under Junhee’s dress the whole time.

These are not the thoughts straight girls have, so, panicked, she runs all the way to Kyungri’s house. Kyungri is the girl she goes to whenever she has problems of any sort, but especially sexual—like that time she kept dreaming about Lu Han touching her inappropriately—, because she’s kind and non-judgemental.

Kyungri’s mother lets her in, and she races to Kyungri’s bedroom, where the other girl is doing her homework, dressed in a little floaty dress, her hair loose.

“Hello,” Kyungri says, with a little smile. It’s the kind of gentle smile Junhee wears, and Jungin tries to remove her thoughts from Junhee as quickly as possible by throwing herself on Kyungri’s bed.

“I have a hypothetical problem,” Jungin says, “and I need your help, but you’ve got to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“Anyone?” Kyungri asks, eyes wide. “That sounds serious.”

“It is,” Jungin says.

“Okay,” Kyungri says, and she looks honest and trustworthy and it soothes Jungin’s heart a little. Kyungri will know what to do. “I promise I won’t tell.”

Jungin lets out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, even though she knows Kyungri well enough that Kyungri will never say no if she really needs her. “So, say, hypothetically, you have a girl overnight and, um, say someone gave her this drug that…that makes her really turned on.” She doesn’t want to say any more than this. It’s not her secret to tell.

Kyungri’s eyes grow even bigger than normal, as she looks at Jungin in surprise. Jungin tries to ignore her.

Jungin ponders her words for a few moments, trying to work out the best way to say it. “So, say, hypothetically, you offer to help her,” she decides on, a little awkwardly. “What does that make you?”

Any other girl would have automatically brought up the fact that most other girls wouldn’t have asked, because it’s just not something you do. No straight girl would ask, and most lesbians wouldn’t, either, without good reason. But she’s asking Kyungri, and not any other girl, for a reason. “Did she let you?” Kyungri asks, and then, when Jungin frowns at her, adds, “hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Yes,” Jungin says. “And, she kind of makes it seem like she wants you to.”

“Well,” Kyungri says. “I think that makes her sound a little bit like she likes you.”

Jungin has wondered about this, but she’s not entirely sure that was what it is. “I think she had no choice,” she says, thinking through it as she talks, for the first time. “I think she just wasn’t able to get herself off, so she needed help, and I was the only one there.” She pauses. “Hypothetically speaking,” she adds, even though she’s said far too much for it to not be obvious that this happened. “But what would that make you? If you were the one offering?”

Kyungri bites her lip. “Did you like it?” she asks gently.

Jungin shrugs her shoulders. “ _She_ liked it,” she says.

“She was drugged and horny, if you’ll have me believe,” Kyungri says, “so of course she liked it. But _you_ offered.”

Jungin twitches. “She looked so helpless and so scared,” Jungin says, softly. “I just wanted to help.”

Kyungri bites her lip again. “I don’t think there are too many altruistic people who offer to have sex with people for the other’s sole benefit,” she says. “So you probably like her a little bit.” She cracked a smile. “Lu Han has competition, I see.”

Jungin is afraid that that may have been the case. She brings her knees up to her chest and buries her face in her shorts. “I keep thinking about it, about doing it again,” she admits, muffled into the material.

“Ah, I see,” Kyungri says. “That is a problem.”

Jungin bites her lip another time. “If…if you do that, does it make you not be a virgin anymore?” she asks quietly. She knows that virginity is usually associated with yourself being—being _penetrated_ ¬—and she wasn’t, but she still feels like she was.

“Do you feel like you’re not a virgin anymore?” Kyungri asks gently, and Jungin thinks about it, again, for a moment, about Junhee’s hands around her shoulders, and Jungin’s own fingers slick inside the older girl, pressed into warm heat. Part of her feels like that, being her first real sexual experience, was it. That something big and important has happened.

“Yes,” Jungin says softly.

“Then you’re not,” Kyungri says gently, and Jungin bows her head again, her lost virginity seeming to float in the air. Kyungri pauses for a moment, leans forward on her elbows and asks, “Who was it?”

“Hypothetically?” Jungin asks quietly.

“Hypothetically,” Kyungri agrees.

Jungin sucks in a deep breath, almost not able to believe she’s about to admit this to Kyungri, and says, “Junhee-unnie.”

“Junhee?” Kyungri gasps. Then she laughs, a little, but kindly. “Jungda’s going to _kill_ you.”

Jungin nods, her head still buried in her limbs. “The worst bit is she doesn’t remember it at all. She doesn’t remember anything for about an hour before it happened. So I’m the only one who knows, who remembers, that we had sex.” She lifts her head to look at Kyungri, who is looking at her with a strange, serene look on her face, but somehow peppered with confusion anyway. “Should I tell her? Won’t that make her feel like I touched her without her knowing? She wanted it, at the time. She told me she’d never have asked, but she was grateful.”

“I would tell her,” Kyungri says. “You’ve got to tell her. It’s only right. _I’d_ want to know.”

Jungin bites her lip. “How?” she asks. “How do you go up to a girl and say, ‘hey, when you slept over at my house, we had sex’. _How_?”

“I don’t know,” Kyungri says. “I’m sure you’ll work it out. You could even say it just like that.”

“I think that would freak her out,” Jungin says, and then spends the rest of the evening attempting to rehearse some sort of speech to inform the older girl of what had transpired.

\---

On Monday, Junhee stays late after school in order to clean up the Science classroom, which they had made messy with several experiments. Partway through her cleaning, there’s a cough at the door, and she looks up to see Jungin there, fidgeting and looking almost _scared_.

“Hello, Jungin,” she says. “Is there something you needed?” She rests the broom she’s using against the table and then composes herself, brushing down her skirt as she tries to fix her expression into one of casual, polite interest.

She doesn’t remember anything that happened at Jungin’s on Friday, which Yifan thinks may be a side effect of the drug she was given, but she’s sure something happened between her and Jungin, because of Jungin’s shifty looks at her afterwards. She seems to be daring Junhee to remember it. Junhee prays she didn’t confess, that nothing weird happened. She’ll probably never remember what happened, which upsets her. She wants to know what has Jungin in such a state.

She also doesn’t remember being at Taecyeon’s. She doesn’t remember the fear she’d felt, or his sinister look as she’d realised he’d drugged her. She knows certain things from having told Yifan when she could still remember, but the drug seems to have wiped her memory. That doesn’t mean she’s not traumatised. Yifan kept her with him almost the entire weekend, cuddling her to his chest and trying to make sure she didn’t get nightmares, and pressing reject when Hyojung tried to call her. But she doesn’t think she needs therapy. She’s grateful enough for that. She thinks Yifan needs it, though. He remembers everything.

“Um,” Jungin says. “I want to tell you something that happened on Friday.”

Speak of the devil, Junhee thinks, hoping that it won’t be anything weird.

“Um,” Jungin repeats, “I’ll just—don’t get mad, I’m sorry.”

“I won’t get mad,” Junhee assures her, furrowing her brow—why would she be mad? Unless she confessed, or did something embarrassing, or—

Her thoughts are broken off by Jungin nervously saying, “Um,” a third time, and then, rushing it out, “we had sex.”

Junhee freezes, feeling her whole body drain itself of any type of warmth and ability to move. She stands there, eyes wide at Jungin. “What?” she manages, finally. She wasn’t expecting that. She doesn’t think anything could have prepared her for that news.

“You were…the guy who—well, he gave you something that made you really horny,” Jungin tries to explain, looking everywhere but at Junhee. Junhee isn’t really sure she wants to look at Jungin either. She can’t believe this is happening. She had sex. She’s not a virgin anymore. And she had sex with the _straight_ girl she loves. She can’t work out if this is the best day ever or the worst. “And you kind of asked me to help, so.”

“I’d never have asked,” Junhee breathes absently, because she wouldn’t have, not realising she’s using the same words she had that night. It’s the only thing she’s certain about.

Jungin looks sheepish. “Okay,” she says. “Well, I offered, because you were saying it without words. I just—I only touched you, there. But it’s still, you know. We still had sex. I thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” Junhee says distantly. There’s an overpowering sense of loss that comes over her. She lost her virginity to the girl she likes, the other girl’s fingers up inside her, and she doesn’t remember it at all, though she can imagine the sensations. “I’m sorry I don’t remember,” she says. “I think I’d like to remember losing my virginity.” The _especially to you_ goes unsaid. She bites her lip. “Um, did we…kiss?”

Jungin shakes her head mutely and Junhee kind of deflates a little. She wouldn’t remember it, but knowing that she got to kiss her would make her feel a little better about this, because Jungin’s probably just going to go back to staring at Lu Han.

“I haven’t even been kissed before, but I’m not a virgin,” Jungin says. “I feel that’s kind of…” She shrugs. Junhee feels sympathy for her, because she understands how she feels. “Have you been kissed before?”

Junhee shakes her head as mutely as Jungin had before, because how many girls are willing to kiss other girls? She’s known other lesbians, you will at a school of only girls, but none of them liked her. So she’s never kissed anyone before. She doesn’t remember Taecyeon’s tongue in her mouth.

“Oh,” Jungin says. “Um.” And then something seems to come over her, and she shuffles into the room. “Seeing as I haven’t been kissed, and you haven’t been kissed, maybe we should—we should you know? To—to see what all the fuss is about.”

Junhee all-but gapes at her. There’s a desperate urge in her just to throw herself at Jungin, to beg her, and there’s another part of her that thinks that Jungin has to be teasing her, because straight girls don’t offer to kiss other girls for fun (nor do they have sex with other girls, but that’s a point for a different time).

Jungin stands straight before her, fidgeting once more. Junhee drops her eyes to take in Jungin’s long fingers clutched in her skirt, the same fingers Jungin used on her, the same fingers she doesn’t remember. She swallows hard, wishing above anything else that she could feel them again, and remember this time.

“Don’t you think so?” Jungin asks. “I’ve had enough, waiting for Lu Han to notice, to make the first move, so maybe I’ll just take it from him so it doesn’t annoy me so much.” And then, without waiting for Junhee to comprehend this, she swoops down and presses her lips to hers.

Junhee’s brain seems to shatter into a million pieces, feeling Jungin’s lips, warm and smooth, against hers, if only for a moment. When Jungin pulls back, Junhee can’t help but dart back in after her, which she blames on her helplessness at being in unrequited love. The first, gentle kiss, turns into two, three, ten, a simple exchange of closed-mouthed kisses. When Junhee pulls back finally and licks her lips, seeing Jungin copy her, she wonders if Jungin can taste her strawberry lip-gloss.

Jungin looks utterly baffled, because she had probably just been expecting one kiss, and not a sequence. “Well, okay, that worked,” she says. “I see, now.”

Junhee wants to bring up that they had hardly kissed; those were pecks, if anything, like her parents used to give her, but she doesn’t know how to put it to make it not pushy. She doesn’t want to push with this, to make her feelings obvious. She doesn’t want to bother Jungin. So she just nods. “Yeah,” she says quietly.

Jungin looks nervous and confused. “So…okay, that was a first kiss, or ten. And we had…what’s—” She breaks off, shaking her head, before the inevitable ‘next’. Junhee doesn’t know what’s next. They certainly did all of this in the wrong order.

Junhee shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says softly, not sure whether she should look at Jungin or not, and, if she looks at Jungin, if Jungin will see her feelings.

“I—” Jungin begins, and then, “I’ll see you later,” and she hurries out of there without another word. Junhee can’t blame her. She’d freak out, too, if it were her. But she’s had many years to think about what being a lesbian means, so she won’t anymore. Even though she loves Jungin so much it hurts, and Jungin is straight. She just doesn’t know what to do.

\---

Jungin doesn’t, this time, run to Kyungri. In fact, she keeps it all to herself, without telling anyone. She doesn’t know what she’d say, anyway. “I kissed Junhee when both of us were aware and she kissed me back”? No, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

So she doesn’t tell anyone—and neither does Junhee, it seems the next day at lunch, when nobody teases either of them for losing their first kiss to the other one.

But somehow the topic of first kisses comes up. Jungin doesn’t know why, but suddenly Chanyeon is talking about kissing, and how much she bets Baekhwa just wants Jinki to come around so she can make out with him. Baekhwa protests, but there’s no conviction in her voice—it almost sounds like a habit by now.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Chanyeon says, not at all sounding sorry, when she notices the expressions on everyone else’s face—they’re all wincing. “I forgot you’re all kiss virgins.”

“So are you,” Baekhwa points out absently. “I don’t think Jinho can even reach to kiss you.”

Rather than hit her, or blush, like the rest of them would have done, Chanyeon just tosses her head back and laughs, so loudly that Lu Han and his friends look over in surprise. When they see it’s just Chanyeon, they roll their eyes good-naturedly and turn away once more. Jungin blushes instead.

“Oh, you,” Chanyeon says easily, tossing one of her bunches over her shoulder. “Jinho can reach just fine.”

Unlike with Baekhwa and Jinki, who are clearly dating, even if they won’t admit it, nobody really knows what’s going on with Chanyeon and Jinho. They started off as next-door neighbours, years ago, and then quickly became best friends, and then—and then something happened in the past couple of weeks, and none of them know what it is, only it occasionally involves Baekhwa ribbing Chanyeon about being too tall for him, although Jinho is barely a centimetre or two shorter than her—hardly worth mentioning. It’s not that Chanyeon doesn’t talk about Jinho all the time, because she does, it’s more that Jungin never really notices when she does it. Jungin is starting to think it’s not just an elaborate hoax and they are actually dating, which is totally unfair, because that means two of her friends are dating, and Lu Han still doesn’t know she exists. This is, of course, a lie, but Jungin likes being overdramatic.

“You know what we should do?” Chanyeon says suddenly, her eyes wide and her smile toothy. “We should practise. There’s nothing better than practising kissing. You need to catch up to me.”

For once, Jungin feels inclined to believe her. She deliberately keeps her eyes away from Junhee and her mouth shut—Chanyeon isn’t the only one who’s had her first kiss, after all.

“I take it we’re supposed to _believe_ you have experience,” Baekhwa says, rolling her eyes. “You and your minute boyfriend.” It’s still a bit rich, coming from her, considering Jinho’s taller than she is. Jungin snorts.

Chanyeon breezes on. “We should play Seven Minutes in Heaven,” she says, airily. “It’s very good practise.”

“Um,” Zitao says. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s where you sit in a cupboard with someone else for seven minutes,” Jungda says. “It’s up to you what you do in the cupboard.”

“People usually make out,” Baekhwa adds.

Zitao frowns, but doesn’t say anything. Jungin wonders if she even understands the term.

“It’ll be fun,” Chanyeon says. “It’ll make it less daunting when it really happens!”

“It does sound fun,” Jungda says, and then, immediately after, “I’ll play if Unnie plays.”

Jungin finds her eyes drawn to Junhee, who is blushing, half covering her face with her hands. But the word she squeaks is clear; “Okay.”

Zitao seems to think that if Junhee is playing then it’s okay for her to play, too, and somehow Jungin finds herself and Baekhwa the only two to not agree. She’s not entirely sure why Kyungri agreed. Kyungri is the last person she’d have thought would agree to such a thing.

“Come on,” Chanyeon and Jungda say in synchrony, prodding Baekhwa.

“Imagine how pleased Jinki-oppa will be when you show him you have kissing experience,” Jungda says.

“Imagine how nice it’ll be to show him how it’s done,” Chanyeon adds.

Baekhwa squirms, but then sighs, and Jungin’s the only one.

“You want to be good for Lu Han, right?” is all that needs to be said before Jungin meekly nods her agreement. Somehow she’s agreed to make out with another girl for seven minutes.

She prays it isn’t Junhee. Even Zitao or Seyoung would be better than Junhee.

\---

They sit in Chanyeon’s sitting room. It’s been a long time since Jungin’s been here. It hasn’t changed at all since they were last over—not that Jungin expected it to be different, but Chanyeon’s parents are as mad as she is, and Jungin wouldn’t put it past them to just up and repaint because they feel like it. She still remembers going over last year and discovering Chanyeon and her older sister Chansuk’s room a different colour than it had been the previous day, because they’d felt like a change.

“Okay,” Chanyeon says, sitting them all down in a ring on the floor, a bag in front of her. “There are eight of us, so I’ve written numbers one to four on two sets of paper. You take a number out and the person who has the same number as you is your partner. Then you will have seven minutes with her in the spare bedroom, where the only thing in there is a mattress. You can do what you want, but it’s good to practise!” She grins.

It seems fairly simple. They all take their turns at pulling out a number. Jungin’s is number four. She hopes it’s Kyungri.

“Who’s number one?” Chanyeon says, and Kyungri raises her hand, and Jungin’s heart falls.

 _It’s okay!_ she tells herself. _There are other girls!_

Baekhwa is the other with the number one, and she rolls her eyes at Kyungri, who smiles back. Jungin can’t actually imagine them kissing, though she supposes they might surprise her.

Number two, Jungin learns, are Chanyeon and Seyoung. Chanyeon brandishes her number with glee when she sees who it is. “I get to corrupt the maknae!” she crows, until Jungda reminds her that Zitao is even younger than Seyoung. “Same difference!” Chanyeon adds, beaming.

There are only three people left; Jungda, Zitao and—Junhee. Jungin feels her heart quickening. She wouldn’t be so lucky, would she? And Jungda wouldn’t be, either, to get her crush. Jungda has no luck with these things.

Jungin’s proven right when Zitao lifts the other copy of Jungda’s number three, leaving Jungin with Junhee.

“Ooh,” Kyungri says, with a smile, and she winks, when nobody’s looking at her. Jungin feels her cheeks burn with embarrassment and she brings her hands up to cover them.

When she turns away from Kyungri, she can see Jungda looking at her with jealousy clear in her eyes. Jungin wants to switch with her so badly. She wouldn’t mind kissing Zitao. But she can’t. They’d promised not to complain.

The groups go up in order, and the other three play card games as the timer goes down. After Chanyeon shouts that time’s up, Kyungri and Baekhwa come out giggling, with slightly rumpled clothing, but no evidence they’ve been kissing at all, which Chanyeon frowns at them for. When she and Seyoung head in, Kyungri settles next to Jungin, who asks her how it was.

“It was fine,” Kyungri says. “Baekhwa’s a good kisser.” And then she slides away before Jungin can ask, because that wasn’t something she’d expected at all.

Chanyeon looks composed—well, composed for her—when she comes back, after Baekhwa calls that their time is up, but Seyoung’s lips are red and she refuses to catch the eye of anyone. She blushes every time Chanyeon touches her and Jungin can’t help herself, giggling behind her hand at Seyoung’s embarrassment.

Unlike the other two groups, Jungin kind of wants to see how Jungda and Zitao do, because neither of them have any experience at all, and Zitao is terribly shy. Jungin wonders if Jungda will just scare her off. But when they come back, as Jungin is near to winning the game, they’re both blushing and giggling, and both of them look thoroughly kissed. Jungin feels the urge to wolf-whistle, but doesn’t, so Chanyeon does instead.

“Your turn!” Chanyeon sings, nudging Jungin. Jungin suddenly wishes she’d never agreed to play, but she stands up shakily, Junhee following her, and walks into the spare room. The door shuts behind them.

Neither of them is wearing a watch, or has a mobile on them, as per the game rules, so Jungin doesn’t know how long they waste just standing inside the doorway, looking at each other.

“We should probably do something,” Junhee says softly, and then she looks away, and heads to sit on the mattress, folding her legs elegantly before her, frilly skirt flowered over her thighs.

Jungin stands for an extra moment before crossing to sit next to her. The mattress is small, but they don’t touch.

“Jungin,” Junhee says softly.

Jungin lets out a nervous, shaky laugh, a far cry from the confidence she usually shows, even when she’s not. She has no idea what to do.

“It’s not like we haven’t kissed before,” Junhee says, though her voice is shaking slightly, too. “It could be just like that.”

But Jungin knows it can’t. She knows they weren’t really kissing. She knows Chanyeon wants this to be a full-on make-out session, if anything. Jungin isn’t sure she can do that, with Junhee.

“You can pretend I’m Lu Han-oppa, if you want?” Junhee adds, still nervously, and she looks away, blushing. At that moment, Jungin looks at her, studies her features, imagines how her hair could be shorter, her build a little bigger, her height a little taller.

“Okay,” she agrees, links one of her hands with Junhee’s, and leans in to kiss her.

The kiss is instantly different from their previous ones. This quickly becomes a little wet, a little messy. Jungin sucks one of Junhee’s lips into her mouth, taking control, even though she knows she’d let Lu Han take control if this were real. She’s never really been one to be at all submissive, but she kind of likes the idea of surrendering to Lu Han’s will.

She licks at Junhee’s mouth until she opens up, and slides her tongue inside, exploring every inch of skin and gum and teeth.

She moves closer, straddling Junhee’s lap, imagining the thighs to be thicker. She imagines how he would clutch at her hips, and distantly feels hands there, gripping on. She imagines how, as their tongues fight faster, he might grow hard, pulsing muscle against her, and feels herself grow wet at the thought, knowing she’d like nothing more than to slip him out of his trousers and hold him in her hand. A distant part of her wonders if Junhee is wet, too, but she doesn’t focus on it. It’s none of her business.

They kiss for what seems like forever, Jungin losing herself in the sensations. She starts rocking against her partner, rutting, almost, against her thigh. The rub of her underwear against her clit urges her faster towards completion, and she gasps into Junhee’s mouth as she succumbs, underwear soaking.

“Time’s up!” she hears distantly, and she pulls away from Junhee. There’s a string of saliva connecting their mouths, and it’s rather gross. Junhee’s eyes are a little unfocused, and she’s not looking at Jungin and—

Jungin throws herself away from Junhee, realising what she’s just done. She used her to—she just got herself off, using her friend. How can she ever look her in the eye again?

“It’s okay,” Junhee says, as she stands up and brushes herself down, still not looking at Jungin. “I understand.”

But Jungin feels utterly mortified, her cheeks bright red with humiliation. This isn’t like helping Junhee to get off because she couldn’t do it herself. This is her taking advantage of her friend to get herself off. “I’m sorry,” she tries to say, but it comes out as a sob of breath. She stops and swallows.

“It’s really okay,” Junhee says, gently, and then takes Jungin’s hand, for a moment before Jungin pulls it back as if she’s burnt her.

But Jungin doesn’t know how it can be okay. It’s an abuse of trust, and it’s embarrassing—Junhee saw her come—but then again, maybe it could count as making them even. They each helped each other.

Jungin feels a little bit better about this as she stands up as well and smooths her own skirt and shirt down.

“What are you two even doing in there?” Chanyeon asks, her voice filled with mirth. “Your time was up a minute ago.”

“Nothing,” Junhee says, “I’m sorry! I dropped something, we’re just looking for it. We’ll be out in a moment.”

Jungin smiles at her, a little uncertainly, and then takes a few deep breaths, before she thinks she’s ready to face the world.

To their credit, their friends don’t really tease them all that much, although Kyungri does tell Jungin that Junhee’s lip-gloss is smeared all over her mouth and she might want to wash it off before she heads home.

They leave together, Jungin and Kyungri, after Jungin scrubs at her mouth with a tissue in the bathroom, wiping the remnants of their kiss from her skin, but not from her mind.

“How was it?” Kyungri asks, smiling warmly. There’s something in her eyes that betrays the mischief that she’s clearly feeling and Jungin looks away.

“Fine,” she says.

“You told her, before, right?” Kyungri continues. “I just wondered how awkward it was for her to kiss you after knowing you’ve already had sex.”

Jungin shrugs. “It didn’t seem to be a problem for her. She said it was okay.”

“Would you do it again?”

Jungin doesn’t say anything this time, because she has no idea how she feels, and she has no idea what the answer to that question is. But at the same time, she thinks she wouldn’t be against the roleplay—if Junhee doesn’t mind. She just doesn’t know how to approach the subject.

\---

It’s not easy for Junhee not to think about it.

Jungin had got herself off, using her. Knowing that they were roleplaying, that Jungin had seen her as Lu Han, made it a little worse, but she’d still got off. Because of their kiss.

The images come back to her, the movement against her thigh, the gasp into her mouth, the way Jungin’s eyes had squeezed shut, and Junhee, only a little ashamed, slides her hand into her underwear.

It’s not the first time she’s done this; she just hasn’t done it for a little while, since they had sex the first time. She makes sure to keep quiet, doing her best to conceal her moans. She doesn’t want to wake her parents up.

She moves quickly, fingers tracing her clitoris faster and faster, the circles growing smaller and smaller, the image of Jungin in her mind the whole time, imagining it’s her fingers, until her legs spasm and she comes breathily, feet flat against the bed.

The moment she’s done, she blushes again. She is only a little embarrassed, but it’s still enough. She just hopes it won’t show on her face the next time she sees Jungin.

\---

It takes until Thursday for Jungin to gather up the nerve to ask Junhee to sleep over at hers.

She’s not entirely sure why she’s so nervous. It’s not like Junhee hasn’t slept over before. It’s not like they’re not friends.

But Jungin is trying to work out a way to ask for somewhat regular sex—or at the very least, kisses—and she needs to work out a way of asking without letting it be known she only wants it for experience. She likes Junhee well enough, but she wants to know what to do when Lu Han sticks his fingers up her more.

This isn’t dating, it’s—well, the word sounds a little callow, but _playmate_ is the best word Jungin can use to think of it. She wants to be playmates with Junhee. She wants Junhee to fuck into her like Lu Han would, she wants to get the benefits of never being alone if she doesn’t have to, she wants the benefits of someone else to get her off.

So she asks Junhee to sleep over, and Junhee says yes.

The whole evening is calculated. Jungin knows what time to start everything, what time to bring up the idea of roleplay, what time to have Junhee begging for it.

But for some reason Junhee comes out of Jungin’s bathroom in a camisole that does nothing to hide the fact Junhee is not exactly _unendowed_ , and the smallest pair of shorts Jungin has ever seen—especially as they make Junhee’s legs go on for miles, even though Junhee has the shortest legs of all of their friends.

“What do you think?” Junhee asks. “I bought these yesterday. Aren’t they cute?” She twirls in a circle, her ponytail spinning with her.

On second look, they are cute, pale blue with little anchors on them. “Yeah,” Jungin agrees, and for some reason the thought to rip them off her comes upon her. She tamps it down. Not time yet.

They watch a film together, curled up on Jungin’s bed. The film is a love story, and Jungin can see Junhee’s toes curl when the couple kiss, and hear the little soft sigh she gives. “I want something like that,” she says, sighing again.

So does Jungin—with Lu Han.

Once the film is over, Junhee looks happy. “I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says. “I want to be better friends with you, Junginnie.”

The nickname bothers Jungin for some reasons she can’t explain, but she keeps her mouth shut and doesn’t complain. “Same here,” she says instead. “But you know what would also be really awesome?”

Junhee shakes her head, and Jungin takes that as her cue. She leans over, places a hand on Junhee’s hip, and kisses her.

The older girl freezes for a moment before kissing back, and quickly it gets heated. Jungin leans down, pushing Junhee onto her back and settling over her. They kiss until their tongues are fighting. Jungin is winning, not that she’d have expected otherwise.

Junhee’s fingers spiralling lightly over her hipbones send erotic jolts through Jungin and soon she’s wet and throbbing. She breaks apart from Junhee for a moment to breathe, “ _Please_ ,” before resealing their mouths together.

Jungin doesn’t need to repeat it, as Junhee’s fingers trail down her hips and then between her legs, pressing the cloth of her shorts against her skin. She rubs gently, causing Jungin to moan into her mouth.

She isn’t cruel though, and after a few more seconds of teasing, slips her fingers under the material and straight against Jungin’s clit.

The movement of her fingers is familiar but the pressure different, the feeling of someone else’s fingers there different. Jungin’s never been touched by someone else before, and it’s a little strange. Junhee doesn’t let down when Jungin pants a little harder as she gets closer—if anything she speeds up. Jungin comes harder than she’s ever come before, and Junhee’s fingers don’t stop even though she’s overly sensitive. Junhee holds her there with one hand, still kissing her, so she can’t move, as she continues teasing Jungin’s clit until she comes a second time, entire body shaking from the oversensitivity. Jungin makes little breathy moans and whines through the whole thing and can’t bring herself to be embarrassed.

Through her daze, Jungin can only think this was a brilliant idea.

Junhee slips one of Jungin’s hands into her shorts a moment later and Jungin gets her off only half thinking about the task at hand, the rest of her mind thinking about how to make it better.

\---

Before Junhee goes home, Jungin makes a point of telling her this is no-strings-attached, that they can just play together like this. Junhee’s smile falters a little, but she agrees to the arrangement, which settles it.

Once she’s gone, Jungin grabs her laptop and opens a new private tab, searching for the nearest sex shops. She’s only sixteen, but she looks older—enough to get in to a shop like that—, and she thinks that something from one of the shops will be a good addition to her sex life.

She heads over there that same day, taking a bus halfway across town and hoping that nobody she knows sees her enter the shop.

Inside are rows and rows of sex toys. Some of them are far too expensive for Jungin to even consider, but there are cheap vibrators, and a tiny little clitoral vibrator that looks like lipstick. Jungin picks this one because it’d be easy to use at short notice, and then picks one of the thinner vibrators. She buys both, along with some warming lube, a few packs of batteries and a cloth bag to hide the toys in so her parents won’t see them if they come into her room. Despite how cheap the toys are, the whole thing becomes rather expensive, and she can feel her purse complaining—but she thinks it’s well-worth it.

She tests the toys when she gets home, the buzzing against her clitoris causing her to curl her toes and cover her mouth with her hand so she doesn’t cry out as she moans her release. The other vibrator feels nice as well, as she imagines it’s Lu Han fucking into her. She absently wishes Junhee were there so she could kiss her, and then wonders what’s happened for her to be thinking that.

It’s just a game, after all. It means nothing.

\---

It’s not that Junhee freaks out. It’s not.

But as she walks home, something hits her. Maybe it’s the realisation of what just happened, but she stops in the middle of the pavement and stares up at the sky for a few moments as her thoughts swirl.

They’d just had sex—when both of them were conscious and willing. And, sure, Jungin had said it wasn’t serious, but how could it _not_ be? They’d had _sex_.

She is too happy about this fact. She knows Jungin is straight, she knows she’s just a substitute for Lu Han, but Jungin picked _her_. She’s happy with just this. This way she can have Jungin all to herself—if only for a little while.

She tries to put it out of her mind and walks home.

When she arrives, Junhee sees Hyojung for the first time since _that night_ , for the older girl is sitting on her couch when she enters the house.

“We haven’t seen you around much,” Hyojung says. This is a somewhat polite way of saying Junhee has been avoiding them, rejecting their calls and running away when she sees them in the corridors. It’s not hard to avoid Hyojung and Bora, but Jihyun and Minyoung are in her classes and constantly try to talk to her. It’s a little easier with them because they weren’t there. But she gets the strangest feeling, when she talks to them, they know something she doesn’t, and they’re judging her for it.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just…I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy for your girlfriends?” Hyojung sighs. “Taecyeon keeps asking about you, I’ve had to make up excuses why you don’t come out any more.”

Junhee stiffens at the mention of him. “I…I don’t really want to see him again,” she says.

“Why?” Hyojung asks. “You were so cosy with him, and then you went back to his. We thought you must have had a lot of fun.”

Junhee feels tears burn in her eyes. “No,” she says. “It wasn’t fun at all.”

“That’s not what he says,” Hyojung says, and she says it in such a way that Junhee can’t tell if she’s mocking her or genuinely thinks he’s telling the truth.

“He doesn’t know what it was like for me,” Junhee says shortly.

“Well, I don’t know, but I know for some reason he lost a lot of teeth.” This time there’s no mistaking the judging tone in her voice, like she’s blaming Junhee for his loss of teeth.

Junhee sniffs, clenching her fists. She still doesn’t remember it, but that doesn’t mean the thought of what happened, from the perspective of an outsider, doesn’t upset her. “He deserved it,” she said.

Hyojung sniffs, and the kindness leeches from her facial expression, leaving it harsh and angry. “I guess you’re just a slut then, you get fucked and then mess up guys’ lives. Not someone I want to be friends with.”

“He tried to rape me!” Junhee spits out. She’s never said the words before, too afraid to, but she needs Hyojung to understand what it was like for her. “He ripped my dress open and took my clothes off and he tried—” Her shoulders shake as her tears escape, thick, heavy sobs wracking her body.

But there’s no sympathy from Hyojung’s end. “You disgust me,” she says, “Taecyeon would never. I’ve known him for years. You’re the one who’s making everything up. Slut.” And then she walks out of Junhee’s house without looking behind her.

Junhee collapses to the ground, sobbing, and that’s how her mother finds her five minutes later. “What happened, Junhee?” she asks. “Did your friend say something to you?”

“She’s not my friend,” Junhee says. “Not anymore.” And then she stands, grabs her coat and leaves to Yifan’s, knowing he’ll be able to calm her down and make what just happened less painful.

\---

Yifan is having a dilemma of his own.

It’s not that he meant to eavesdrop, but when Lu Han and Yixing have quiet conversations in their bedroom, it usually means something he wants to know. Not because they tell secrets, but usually because it results in something Yifan has to fix, like the time Lu Han told Yixing to play guitar on the roof, naked, at four in the morning, and the police were called, or the time Yixing convinced Lu Han to bake ice cream pizza, which very nearly burnt the house down. It also smelt disgusting.

So he’d settled next to the open door to listen without giving himself away. Lu Han had been facing the door and Yixing away, but even Yifan could tell Yixing was worried, picking at his lips.

“It’s so hard,” Yixing said. “I thought it was getting easier, but it isn’t.”

“You’re his best friend,” Lu Han said. “I thought it was okay?”

Yifan had frowned. Best friend? That’s him, isn’t it? They were talking about him?

“I keep telling myself that,” Yixing said, “but it’s not okay. I just—why won’t he notice? I’ve always been here. And yet it’s always everyone else he talks about. It’s never me. Why isn’t it me?”

There’s something strange about Yixing’s words. Yifan hadn’t let himself think about it. He hadn’t _wanted_ to think about it. Because he knew it would explain some things.

“Would you talk to him about yourself?” Lu Han pointed out, but Yixing’s shoulders shook.

“I would if it’d get him to notice I’ve been here all along. I just—he deserves someone, and maybe that’s not me, but—” He shook his head. “It’s been years. I have loved him for years.”

“Maybe you should tell him?” Lu Han offered. “ _Because_ it’s been years.”

“I don’t want to ruin this friendship,” Yixing breathed. “What would I do without Yifan-ge?”

And there it is, clear as day.

Yixing is in love with him, and has been for years.

Yifan doesn’t know what to do with this knowledge. It sure explains things, like Yixing always angling to hold his hand, and his excitement whenever he sees Yifan. He tries so hard to make him happy.

He remembers them snuggling the night Junhee had been attacked and wonders if the good sleep Yixing had had was because he’d been able to hold Yifan.

Yifan doesn’t want to think about it. He knows he loves Yixing; he loves all of them—Yixing, Lu Han, Minseok. But could he ever have more feelings for him?

He’s never thought about boys before, but he’s never really thought about anyone. He’s never had a girlfriend, despite what other students might think about him. He’s never even told his friends. He never had time for dating back in Canada, even though he was popular. It just wasn’t his thing.

And here? Here he could be expelled for even talking to a girl in school. He only gets away with talking briefly to Junhee because he’d managed to inform a teacher they were related. The clause gets waived for relatives.

He can kind of see himself dating someone like Yixing, though. Someone smaller than him, but with a big personality. Someone who loves him unconditionally, who cares for him. Someone to curl up to, to kiss, to come home to. Yixing is handsome, for a guy, his body made for dancing. Yifan is sure he’d feel good against him.

When Junhee arrives, he tries to switch off, to give her all the attention in the world to help her, but there’s still part of him wondering if it’d be so bad to just kiss Yixing and let it happen.

\---

There’s a surprise on Monday at lunchtime when Jungin sits down. Baekhwa and Chanyeon are the only ones already there and they lean across the table and start whispering conspiratorially.

“You know what I saw?” Chanyeon whispers. “In the toilets earlier?”

“No?” Jungin asks.

“It’s brilliant,” Baekhwa says.

“Okay?” Jungin prompts.

Chanyeon sucks in a deep breath but Baekhwa gets there first.

“Jungda and Zitao were making out,” she shoots out.

Jungin widens her eyes in surprise. “ _What_?” she says. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

“They’ve been _dating_ for a week!” Chanyeon shrieks, her voice utterly delighted. “The baby is growing up!”

“That’s amazing,” Jungin says, and she’s not lying. “I’m glad Jungda got over Junhee-unnie.”

“Well, if that doesn’t have more than one meaning,” a voice whispers into her ear, and Jungin looks up to see Kyungri sliding into a chair. Out loud Kyungri says, “Jungda and Zitao would make the cutest couple so I’m so glad for them.”

Baekhwa and Chanyeon turn to look at her. “Hey, Kyungri,” Chanyeon says. “Don’t you want a boyfriend? I’ve never heard you talk about boys _or_ girls.”

Kyungri shrugs. “There’s someone I like,” she says, “but I’m not going to do anything about it. Not until other things happen first.”

Jungin is intrigued, but doesn’t ask, because Junhee turns up then and smiles at her, eyes crinkling, and Jungin suddenly loses all words.

\---

What starts as organised—getting Junhee over the next weekend for more playtime, which turns into experimentation with the toys (Junhee whimpers extremely loudly with the vibrator pressed against her clit after she’s already come twice, Jungin getting her own back, and there’s something about whimpers that Jungin probably likes too much)—quickly turns into spontaneous get-togethers, once in the toilets at school when Lu Han’s hair is particularly fantastic. Junhee has Jungin pressed against the wall of the furthest stall, lipstick vibrator pressed against her on one of its pattern settings so the vibrations build up, four fingers inside as Jungin bites down on her forearm so she makes no noise. When one of them is horny, they phone the other one. Jungin discovers she is perfectly accommodating when Junhee phones her at nine o’clock. Jungin also learns that phone sex is actually quite satisfying.

After this has been going on for well over a month of play-dates, Jungin decides that they need a new way of making it _even better_ , and she opens another private window on her laptop and searches porn websites for amateur lesbian videos—not what she’d thought she’d be doing a few months back, but not necessarily a bad use of her time.

She ends up spending her evening with headphones in, watching girls lick other girls’ breasts and clitorises, watches an assortment of toys be inserted into different body parts, including a double-headed dildo that looks like it might be very nice to play with. The girls make such wonderful noises that Jungin finds herself rubbing herself through her underwear. She has worked out by now that she has quite the voice kink, and wonders if listening to someone sing could get her wet, but that’ll have to wait for another day. She doesn’t know if Junhee sings.

What the porn does tell her is that licking works very well, and she thinks it’ll be fun, if she can convince Junhee it’s a good idea.

\---

But as things are wont to do when it comes to Junhee, it doesn’t happen like she’d planned.

Junhee is being a glutton, sitting on the counter of her kitchen with a bottle of chocolate sauce in her hand, squeezing it into her mouth. She’s only wearing her bra and shorts, having decided she didn’t want chocolate on her shirt, which is not a bad estimation considering she eats like a three year old, chocolate smeared on her cheeks and fingers. She keeps squeezing chocolate sauce onto her fingers and sucking them into her mouth and for some reason she looks so good doing it that Jungin gives in to the part of her that wants to lick the chocolate off her cheek.

Junhee is startled enough that she presses a hand to her face, rubbing chocolate into her neck, so Jungin licks that up as well, momentarily sucking at her pulse point.

The other girl looks at her for a moment, giving her a measured stare, before she does something Jungin wouldn’t have expected several months ago; she upends the chocolate bottle and dribbles chocolate over her chest.

Jungin knows she’s doing it on purpose this time, but it doesn’t stop her from leaning in and lapping it up, tongue lathering the skin just above her breasts, and then she swipes chocolate between her thumb and forefinger, tugs Junhee’s bra down, and swipes it over her nipple.

The look Junhee gives her is lust-filled and she moans and drops her head as Jungin sucks the nipple into her mouth, licking at it. Junhee rubs her other nipple with her fingers, and quickly both nipples are hard and pointed. Jungin laps at the other nipple momentarily before slinking down Junhee’s body. “Lift,” she orders, and Junhee lifts herself slightly off the counter so Jungin can pull her shorts and underwear down.

Jungin sucks marks into the soft flesh of Junhee’s inner thighs before just going for it. She licks straight in, and Junhee moans loudly and brings a hand down to clutch at Jungin’s hair. Jungin probably now has chocolate in her hair, but she doesn’t care. She licks circles around Junhee’s clit, at first wide and then smaller. She pulls away for a moment to slide down to lick at Junhee’s hole, tongue slipping inside for a moment, before moving back up to her clit. She licks at varying speeds until Junhee’s legs begin to quiver, when Jungin takes her clit into her mouth and just sucks until Junhee comes hard. Junhee brings her up by the hair to kiss her and Jungin wonders if she can taste herself in their kiss.

Junhee jumps off the counter and slides down Jungin’s body to return the favour, and it really is as good as Jungin had thought it would be—warm tongue wetting the skin, lapping at her until her release. She tries not to pull Junhee’s hair but it’s hard and she ends up pressing Junhee’s face into her crotch, Junhee’s nose rubbing against her as she comes.

And then there’s a key in the door and Jungin’s pretty sure neither of them has thrown on clothes quite so quickly before.

“Oh Junhee, you’ve got chocolate in your hair,” Junhee’s mother says. “What were you two doing?”

Neither of them manages to look her in the eye.

“Also, aren’t those Junhee’s shorts?” her mother asks Jungin. Jungin looks down at herself, looks over at Junhee wearing her own, and decides she doesn’t mind at all. Junhee blushes but grins at the same time and Jungin wants nothing more than to kiss it off her mouth, even though her mother is there.

She doesn’t.

\---

Junhee’s managed to avoid Hyojung and Bora since Hyojung had come to her house the month before, but she’s always known she can’t avoid them forever.

The group finds her on Monday morning when she’s alone, and crowd her into the wall, looking just like normal friends.

“So it’s the little slut,” Hyojung says to her.

“I’m not!” Junhee protests, although it’s a little bit meek.

“You told Hyojung Taecyeon-oppa tried to rape you, you little slut,” Bora says. “Was it not good enough for you? Do you feel the need to ruin someone’s reputation just because he couldn’t get you off?”

There are tears burning behind Junhee’s eyes and she does her best to suppress them, to not let the girls see how this is affecting her. It’s not like she wants to be a bitch, she’s just telling the truth. “He _did_ try,” she says, voice trembling.

They sneer at her, although Jihyun and Hyuna look a little unsure, maybe even pitying. But they don’t stop the main two girls.

“Taecyeon would never hurt a fly,” Hyojung says. “I’ve known him for years.”

“Me too,” Bora says. “He’d never do it. What do you want from him? Are you just that angry and bitter?”

“I don’t want anything,” Junhee says. “Maybe an apology.” She kind of wants her shoes back, since they were expensive and special to her, but she doesn’t think saying that would help her case at all.

Bora sneers at her. “You’re pathetic,” she says.

Junhee doesn’t understand why she’s pathetic for wanting a rapist to apologise, but she keeps her mouth shut, which of course means Bora thinks she’s won.

“Even you think you’re pathetic, don’t you?” she says, and leans closer, into Junhee’s space. “A pathetic slut.” She raises a hand up to smack her.

Junhee refuses to shut her eyes, staring up at her defiantly. She wants to remember this.

Bora’s hand never comes down.

\---

Jungin is walking along the corridor, trying to find Junhee for a quick make-out session in the toilets, when she sees the group of girls crowded against the wall. She recognises them as Junhee’s old friends, the ones Junhee never hangs around anymore.

At first she doesn’t think anything of it, but as she walks by she can hear some of the things they’re saying and she realises what’s happening.

Anger flares up in her the way it hasn’t before. Worry, fear and misery are things she’s felt when Junhee was being hurt, but never anger. Junhee doesn’t deserve this. She was the one who was hurt by this, and now she’s being hurt even more. Jungin knows she needs to do something about this.

She marches over to the girls, shoves her way through them, using the added benefit of being taller than all of them, and reaches Junhee just as a girl is about to hit her.

Jungin catches her hand and shoves her back. The girl stumbles, but the others catch her so she doesn’t fall.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jungin snaps. “What did she do to you?”

The girl snorts, and her friend beside her rolls her eyes. “She’s a lying slut, and lying sluts need to be taught lessons they deserve,” her friend says.

“She’s not a slut,” Jungin spits out, the fire still burning inside her. “She’s my girlfriend. She was drugged and that guy tried to hurt her and he deserves whatever he got, and you need to get better friends. Now, we’re going. Don’t talk to Junhee _ever again_.”

She turns to Junhee, who is looking up at her with surprise, and takes her hand, leading her out of the group. She ignores the other girls, some of whom gasped at her confession, and just works on getting Junhee to a safe place.

She ends up taking Junhee to the empty girls’ toilets on the second floor, where, instead of kissing her as had been her intention in the first place, she gathers Junhee into her arms and just hugs her. “I’m sorry,” she whispers into Junhee’s hair. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry I didn’t stop it earlier.”

Junhee shakes a little in her arms, so Jungin just holds her closer until she stops. Junhee leans up and presses her lips against hers in a chaste, gentle kiss, a little like the ones they’d had at the beginning. “Thank you,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I’m glad you were there.”

Jungin still feels like there’s something more she could have done to help Junhee, but she doesn’t know what it is. Instead, she presses light, fluttering kisses against Junhee’s nose, cheeks and mouth until she giggles and Jungin’s heart settles.

\---

Rumours spread across the school quickly, but Jungin doesn’t hear about them until Kyungri corners her after class.

“I heard what you did for Junhee,” she says. “And normally I’d be very proud of you, but—Jungin, you outed Junhee, and it wasn’t your place to do that.”

“I did what?” Jungin asks, tilting her head in confusion. Outed?

Kyungri sighs. “You told those girls she’s gay, and now there are rumours all over the school. Girls are avoiding her because they think she’s going to hit on them, and even the boys are breaking the rules to call rude things to her. Five people have received suspensions so far, but they don’t even seem to care.”

Jungin just blinks at her. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. She says so.

“Jungin, you said she was your girlfriend,” Kyungri says. “And most of the school is aware you like Lu Han—” When Jungin gives her a frown, Kyungri adds, “Come on, Jungin, you’re not exactly subtle about it. But because of that, they think you’re just bisexual but she’s the full-on girlfriend stealing lesbian. And people are terrified.”

“But _why_?” Jungin says. “It makes no sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t. But by outing her you’ve caused a lot of problems. I think you should at least apologise to Junhee.”

“But she’s not—” Jungin begins, and then stops. Not what? Not a lesbian? Not a girlfriend-stealing one? Not Jungin’s girlfriend?

“Jungin, maybe you should ask her,” Kyungri says, and then walks away.

\---

The rumour gets around to Yixing as well, but although he’s angry on Yifan’s behalf, and he knows that Yifan will need calming down before he explodes and—rightly so—kills every homophobe who tries to attack Junhee, the thing he really focuses on is the fact that somehow Junhee managed to get the girl she wants, and he’s still without Yifan. He feels jealous and a little ashamed at the same time.

But when he sees Yifan, waiting for him outside the gates, after school, hands and jaw tightly clenched, all of that leaves him. Lu Han and Minseok are trying to calm him down and failing, and Junhee is there as well, with Zitao, rubbing his arms gently.

Yixing can’t help himself. He runs the final few metres.

“Oppa, it’s okay,” Junhee is saying softly, but she’s cut off as Lu Han explodes,

“ _Finally_ , he’s here! Just get over here, will you?”

Yixing gives him a dirty glare but takes over from Junhee, Zitao and the two boys. He rubs Yifan’s arms through his jacket, until Yifan sighs and leans a little into him. “It’ll be okay,” Yixing assures him. “We’ll get them all, just you see.”

When Yifan is calm enough for Yixing to pay attention to the others, he turns away to see Junhee smiling gratefully at him and Zitao, Lu Han and Minseok covering their mouths in an attempt to disguise the fact they’re all laughing. Yixing glares at them, and then he feels a hand cover his own.

Whilst Yifan is usually grateful to Yixing when he takes his hand, he rarely, if ever, takes Yixing’s first. This is one of those rare occasions, Yixing realises, as he follows the arm connected to the hand holding his up to Yifan. Yifan smiles a little at him but doesn’t let go, so Yixing doesn’t say anything. Instead, he follows as they begin to walk home, Yifan having left his car at home this morning.

“You look tired, Yifan,” Lu Han says once they reach their home. “Maybe you should go to bed?”

Yixing makes a move to let go of Yifan’s hand, but Yifan tightens his and leads him to his room.

Yifan settles onto his bed slowly, and then looks up at Yixing. “Thank you,” he says.

“It was nothing,” Yixing says, feeling a little confused. Yifan doesn’t usually thank him.

“I mean—” Yifan shakes his head. “I mean thank you for everything you’ve done for me these past few years.” He sounds nervous, unsure. Yixing doesn’t understand what’s going on. Yifan still hasn’t let go of his hand.

“It’s really nothing,” Yixing tries to assure him, although Yifan’s nervousness is contagious and he’s wondering what’s going to happen next, as he tries not to shift from foot to foot.

“No, I—” And here Yifan breaks off and tugs with their joined hands. Yixing feels himself overbalance and he tries to catch himself on Yifan’s shoulder, but Yifan just pulls him down harder until Yixing is straddling his lap. Yifan looks at him with a strange expression on his face. Here they’re so close that Yixing could probably count Yifan’s eyelashes, if he’d tried.

“What—?” Yixing manages before Yifan’s nose crashes into his. “ _Ow_!” he whines, an echo coming from Yifan, who reaches up to rub at his own nose.

“Sorry,” Yifan says. “Take two.”

And then his mouth brushes Yixing’s.

_Oh._

\---

Yifan catches Jungin the next day before school, grabbing her arm and leading her outside the gates to where they won’t be seen. There are many things on his chest he wants to say. Lu Han had wanted to be there, too, but Yifan had said that was probably a bad idea. He’d probably say the wrong thing.

“Thank you,” he says.

“What for?” she asks, frowning, but he just laughs.

“A lot of things, I suppose. You’ve made Junhee so happy.”

She smiles softly. “I’m glad,” she says. “I never wanted to upset her.”

“I’m so glad you’re dating her,” he continues. “You make a good couple, I think.”

Jungin blinks at him for a few moments. “Uh,” she says, intelligently.

Yifan frowns. “You _are_ dating, right?” he asks, because she seems to look confused. “You called her your girlfriend.”

Jungin blinks at him for a few moments and then says, “So I did. Yes.”

Yifan thinks she’s a bit weird. But Junhee seems to really like her, and that’s what’s important. “Junhee _really_ likes you,” he says, instead. He continues mostly lightly, but with a hint of a threat, “So if you break her heart, you know what to expect.”

“Um,” Jungin says. “I’ll try not to?”

“Good,” Yifan says, and then leaves her standing there, mouth open, an aura of confusion around her.

“You weren’t out there for a long time,” Yixing teases when Yifan arrives in the toilets. “Going soft?”

“No,” Yifan says, grabs him by the waist and tugs him close. “Threats don’t have to be long,” he says, and then kisses him again.

\---

Jungin’s still reeling from this morning, when Yifan threatened her under the guise of politeness and gratefulness, when Kyungri stumbles into her History classroom during the break before class and flops into the chair next to her, blinking.

“What happened?” Jungin asks, frowning.

“Lu Han just asked me out,” Kyungri says.

Jungin’s first thought is, “You mean he asked you in school?”

“Yeah,” Kyungri says, “how daring is that?” She pauses. “Wait a minute—you’re not mad?”

Jungin would have been mad a couple of days ago—except she probably wouldn’t have, because Junhee hasn’t just been a plaything to waste time with for over a month now, if she’s truly honest. She actually _likes_ Junhee. She wants to kiss her in public and hold her hand and go on dates with her, and that’s totally sappy, but it’s true. “No,” she says. “You’re welcome to him.” And then she slyly opens her phone under the table and alternates between looking at Kyungri and scrolling through the thirty-or-so pictures of Junhee she’s somehow accumulated—without really remembering when she took them.

Kyungri visibly _lights up_. “Oh—oh, thank you!” she says, like she needed Jungin’s acceptance before she could do anything about it. “I told him you still liked him, and I’d have to run it by you, first.”

“Why would you do that?” Jungin asks absently, stuck on a photo she definitely didn’t take, Junhee half-naked, looking coyly under her eyelashes at the camera. _Damn_ the girl knows how to turn Jungin on.

“Because I know you only started this thing with Junhee because of him,” Kyungri says quietly.

“Well he’s out of the picture now,” Jungin says, because it’s true. She hasn’t actually thought about him for weeks now. “He’s all yours.”

Kyungri runs out of the room with a squeal. Jungin dutifully shouts, “Don’t get suspended!” out after her and turns back to her phone.

\---

Jungin decides that confessing her feelings to Junhee—that she’s not just a Lu Han replacement, that Jungin _really likes her_ , needs to come with something new. What Jungin buys to go with her confession is a double-headed strap-on like the one she’d watched in the porn videos so long ago, the one she’d thought would be fun to play with. She’s fucked into Junhee with a vibrator before, hard and fast, slow and gentle, but the idea of being able to do it with her body is even more appealing.

But first, because Junhee isn’t there, she wants to try something else that’s new.

“Do you sing?” she asks Junhee, over the phone.

“Uh,” Junhee says. “Yeah, I do—but just in the shower. I’m not very good.”

“Could you sing for me?” Jungin asks. “Please?”

“Okay,” Junhee says, nervously, and then begins to sing, shaky at first with nerves, but stronger as time goes by. Junhee’s voice is beautiful, thick and throaty and it sounds like honey and sex and Jungin turns the phone on speaker and rubs herself through her underwear as Junhee’s voice builds, and comes biting her wrist hard.

There’s a pause, and then Junhee says, “Did you just—?”

“ _I like your voice_ ,” Jungin hurries out, suddenly embarrassed, even though she already knew she has a voice kink from the porn and Junhee’s moans. “I could hang up on you, if you want!”

“No!” Junhee protests. “It’s kind of—I’m glad you like it, Junginnie.” She sounds shy. Jungin wants to kiss her everywhere.

But Junhee isn’t there, so Jungin commands, “Touch yourself,” knowing Junhee’s all-too-willing to obey, and the moans that mount afterwards are enough to get Jungin wet again and really wishing Junhee is there with her.

\---

Junhee next goes over to Jungin’s house at the weekend, when Jungin’s parents are once again out of town, as they’re seeming to be nowadays.

They’ve seen each other all week, shy kisses between them. Junhee had asked if Jungin is upset about Kyungri and Lu Han. Junhee’s seen them kissing when she’s at Yifan’s, and she thinks they’re cute. Jungin had told her she no longer cares, which had made—and still makes—Junhee’s heart swell with the implications.

“You do know Seyoung and Minseok-oppa are the only two not dating now, right?” she asks, once inside Jungin’s home, keeping her coat tightly around her.

“Please don’t talk about them whilst I am trying to kiss you,” Jungin protests, and Junhee laughs and consents to Jungin’s mouth against hers.

They kiss for what seems like forever. “One of these days I’ll take you on a real date,” Jungin says, as she pulls back for air. “I’m sorry we never go on dates.”

“It’s okay,” Junhee says with a surprised but pleased laugh, realising what this means, and she clutches closer, hugging Jungin. “I’m happy with this. I really like you, Jungin.”

“It’s not okay,” Jungin says, pulling back from her. “I—I should never have treated you as a replacement for Lu Han-oppa. You’re _perfect_ and I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you. I don’t know why you like me.”

“I—” There’s an air bubble in her throat. Junhee swallows it. “I love you,” she says softly. “Because you’re wonderful and you’re lovely and you make me feel happy.”

Jungin swallows, and Junhee can see tears glistening in her eyes. She kisses Jungin instead, licking into her mouth to distract her.

When they pull apart, Jungin says, “I have a present for you.”

She leads Junhee into her bedroom. Junhee looks around for a moment, as Jungin picks up something from the bed. When she sees what it is, Junhee laughs and takes her coat off. Underneath she’s wearing the sexiest nightdress she could find. Jungin sits on the bed and swears.

“Come here,” she says, tugging Junhee to sit on top of her, and kisses her another time, hands sliding under Junhee’s dress to stroke her thighs. She rubs across Junhee’s nipples and sucks at her throat, until Junhee’s body is on fire.

Jungin insists Junhee keep the dress on, as they try to work out how the strap-on works. One end, shorter than the other, slides inside Jungin first. Junhee lubes this part up herself, rubbing lasciviously, and then guides it inside, fucking into Jungin with it a few times before strapping it around her to hold it up. Jungin moans and then, a little impatiently, rubs lubricant onto the other end. Junhee then slides it inside her under her dress. It’s thicker than the vibrator they usually use, and as such Junhee feels fuller than she usually does, but it’s not a bad feeling.

She rides the dildo for a few moments as Jungin just watches, eyes glazed over with lust, and then Jungin flips them over, finding it easier to buck into Junhee and still get pleasure out of it herself.

They go slowly, Jungin leaning down to kiss her, running fingers over her lightly—which, rather than being ticklish, are more erotic in such a circumstance. It takes a long time for the pleasure to build up, which is fine, because they have all the time in the world.

When they come, together, Jungin whispers, “Love you,” into Junhee’s mouth and Junhee couldn’t possibly be happier than she is right now.

Moving schools was the best thing that ever happened to her.

\---

Epilogue

Yifan gets called in by the police two weeks later. (Yifan is surprised it took so long.)

He does his best to explain what had happened, the fear his sister had been feeling, the anger he’d felt as the boy taunted him, joked about raping his sister like it was something funny.

He hadn’t denied doing it. He’d do it again.

Because he’d admitted it, the jail time is fairly short, and Taecyeon also gets punished for the attempted rape, which is something Junhee is grateful for.

When her father realises who the boy who got jail time is, from a short piece in the newspaper about a boy who got three months for assault, he scolds Junhee. “I thought you were going to stop being friends with him? I told you that I don’t want you being friends with boys like that.”

Junhee gathers her courage and stands up. “Appa,” she says, “Yifan-oppa was protecting me. That boy tried to rape me.”

Her father stares at her in a combination of shock and horror. Her mother, who had just come in the room, says, “What a good boy he is. Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

“It hurt,” Junhee says. It still hurts, but they need to see. Yifan isn’t a bad boy, quite the opposite.

“You should date him,” Junhee’s mother says. “There are not many boys who’d protect a girl like that.” A fact which is very sad, Junhee thinks.

Junhee laughs, but it’s a little unkind. “He’s my brother,” she says, and then says, “I’m dating Jungin anyway.” It’s a little unfair. Her mother has never been anything but loving. But she’s always been wary of Junhee’s feelings for girls.

The look her mother gives her is priceless.

“I’m heading out to Jungin’s,” Junhee says, “I love you~, don’t wait up for me,” and she escapes before the fact Yifan is her brother sinks in to her mother, and the inevitable explosion that’ll follow.

It may be unfair on her father, but he’s the one who’s kept the secret all these years, so she doesn’t feel that bad about it.


End file.
